Assessing efficacy of diabetes school using diabetes knowledge scale in Turkey

Background: Diabetes education, as an essential component of diabetes management, improves various aspects of diabetes mellitus including lowering Haemoglobin A1c. There is a number of surveys evaluating diabetes knowledge.Methods: The purpose of this study to measure diabetes knowledge of patients with diabetes mellitus after a structured group education programme named as diabetes school. This study is an observational study and the design is a cohort study. The study took place in 2017-2018. The duration of follow-up is 4 weeks. Fifty-four patients aged over 18 with a previous diagnosis of diabetes mellitus, who attended to the diabetes school education programme, were included to the study. Twenty-three patients participated in the true-false version of the revised Michigan diabetes knowledge questionnaire before and after the programme.Results: Twenty female and 3 male patients were aged 60.43±9.97 years. The scores improved significantly after the education programme (7.61±4.59 vs 12.39±3.35, p<0.0001). The number of patients correctly identifying more than half of the statements showed a steep increase after the programme (n=6, 26.0% vs n=17, 73.9%). Before education programme 13 had poor knowledge, 9 had moderate, and 1 had good knowledge. After completion 6 had poor knowledge, 11 had moderate, and 5 had good knowledge.Conclusions: Diabetes school is effective in improving diabetes knowledge in patients with diabetes mellitus. Revised Michigan Diabetes Knowledge Questionnaire can be used to evaluated diabetes knowledge. It may aid to detect the subgroup of patients who are lack knowledge of various aspects of diabetes mellitus

Adolescents with unexplained chest pain reported depression and impaired emotional and social functioning

AimChest pain is common in adolescence, but there are no established criteria for managing this problem, which is rarely associated with cardiac disease. This study addressed the gaps in the literature by evaluating psychosocial factors that could be associated with medically unexplained chest pain.MethodsWe consecutively selected 100 patients (68% girls) aged 13‐18 who were diagnosed with unexplained chest pain when they presented to the cardiology outpatient clinics of Tepecik Research Hospital, İzmir, Turkey, between 30 September 2015 and 30 June 2018. The controls were 76 age‐ and sex‐matched adolescents (69% girls) aged 13‐18 who were undergoing routine cardiology assessments before joining sports clubs. We assessed their health‐related quality of life and any depression and physical symptoms.ResultsRegression analysis showed some adolescents were a number of times more likely to report chest pain. These included those who reported boredom (4.1 times), felt stressed or anxious (2.2) and those who experienced sleep disturbance (2.6), co‐morbid headaches (2.0), back pain (3.1) and impaired social functioning (1.2).ConclusionThe results indicated a significant association between unexplained chest pain and physical symptoms, depression and impaired emotional and social functioning. These factors warrant further evaluation.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156129/2/apa15144.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156129/1/apa15144_am.pd

THREE ESSAYS ON TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE, THE STATE, AND EMPLOYMENT

This dissertation studies the relations between technological change, the state, and employment. In the first essay, we make a case for a new institutional component, Productive State Apparatus, for Social Structure of Accumulation theory to argue that the long periods of stable accumulation and their differential performance can be better explained by the extended institutional framework. In the second essay, we derive a couple of conditions that ensure positive growth in employment within a cyclical growth model and propose a ratio - growth in labor productivity per rate of accumulation- to empirically assess the labor-saving property of capital goods. We provide evidence from both US and other advanced economies that shows that the labor-saving property of capital goods has not become stronger in the period 1979-2007 compared to 1950-1973. In the third essay, we use industry-level data from 12 advanced economies between 1970-2007 and show that neither capital-goods became more effective in labor-saving nor the strength of the relation between output and employment became weaker after 1980 or 1990