The Deserving And Undeserving: Examining Ontario\u27s New Strategy For Organ And Tissue Donation

The medical marvel of organ and tissue transplantation has spurred new questions about the divisible body and its potential for commodification, dividing the world into unequal populations —receivers and donors. Efforts to foster equilibrium in the supply and demand of transplantable organs have led many to argue for market-based solutions; however the role of privilege has often been made invisible in these discussions, exacerbating pre-existing global inequalities. This paper acknowledges Canadian patient engagement in systems of organ trafficking, and explores the current strategy enacted by Trillium Gift of Life Network (TGLN) to improve organ and tissue donation and transplantation (OTDT) in Ontario and its potential to mitigate transplant tourism. Using an institutional ethnographic approach, the focal point of this research is an examination of the primary texts produced by TGLN. Proposals supporting a legal market for organs are also addressed, including their conflict with the Canadian Medicare system, which was established to prevent the allocation of health care services based on ability to pay. Significantly, TGLN upholds this principle and emphasizes the value in altruistic donation and decommodified approaches to OTDT. If successful, TGLN could lead the way for improving systems of OTDT in Canada. However, concerning themes have been identified which can be understood as barriers to the success of TGLN and thus impede its efforts to increase donation, develop adequate infrastructure with which to effectively procure and allocate organs and tissues, and reduce incidence of Canadian patient participation in transplant tourism

Affective communication in normal and brain-damaged adults: An overview

In the past few decades an increasing number of investigators have examined how emotions are communicated through facial expression, speech prosody, and language in nonclinical and brain-damaged populations. Disorders of emotional communication (often referred to as affective processing disorders) are commonly associated with brain damage. These disorders include difficulty with expressing and perceiving emotional information, regulating emotions in communicative interactions, and demonstrating sensitivity to the emotional expressions of communicative partners. The purposes of this article are to: (1) describe normal affective communication; (2) review disorders in affective expression, perception, and regulation; (3) discuss the modality of facial expression and disorders of affective facial expression; and (4) present some informal tools for assessing affective processing

The Role of Coercion in the Treatment of Women with Co-Occurring Disorders and Histories of Abuse

Debate continues on issues of involuntary treatment for individuals with behavioral healthcare problems. Women with co-occurring disorders and histories of abuse are an especially vulnerable population. This study seeks to increase our knowledge about the experiences of coercion for women in the behavioral healthcare system. Patterns of coercion are explored. This study did not find the predicted relationship between high levels of interpersonal violence and frequent involuntary treatment experiences. The results do offer support for the hypothesis that women are more likely to be currently mandated to treatment if they have been recently arrested, and that being mandated to treatment does not appear to be related to clinical issues such as recidivism and acute symptoms. As expected, women currently required to be in treatment report having less choice in other aspects of their care. Implications for future research in the current climate of increasingly coercive policies are presented

The Social Media Index as an Indicator of Quality for Emergency Medicine Blogs: A METRIQ Study

Study objective: Online educational resources such as blogs are increasingly used for education by emergency medicine clinicians. The Social Media Index was developed to quantify their relative impact. The Medical Education Translational Resources: Indicators of Quality (METRIQ) study was conducted in part to determine the association between the Social Media Index score and quality as measured by gestalt and previously derived quality instruments. Methods: Ten blogs were randomly selected from a list of emergency medicine and critical care Web sites. The 2 most recent clinically oriented blog posts published on these blogs were evaluated with gestalt, the Academic Life in Emergency Medicine Approved Instructional Resources (ALiEM AIR) score, and the METRIQ-8 score. Volunteer raters (including medical students, emergency medicine residents, and emergency medicine attending physicians) were identified with a multimodal recruitment methodology. The Social Media Index was calculated in February 2016, November 2016, April 2017, and December 2017. Pearson's correlations were calculated between the Social Media Index and the average rater gestalt, ALiEM AIR score, and METRIQ-8 score. Results: A total of 309 of 330 raters completed all ratings (93.6%). The Social Media Index correlated moderately to strongly with the mean rater gestalt ratings (range 0.69 to 0.76) and moderately with the mean rater ALiEM AIR score (range 0.55 to 0.61) and METRIQ-8 score (range 0.53 to 0.57) during the month of the blog post's selection and for 2 years after. Conclusion: The Social Media Index's correlation with multiple quality evaluation instruments over time supports the hypothesis that it is associated with overall Web site quality. It can play a role in guiding individuals to high-quality resources that can be reviewed with critical appraisal techniques