Probabilistic forecasts of stock prices and earnings: The hazards of nascent expertise

Undergraduate and graduate students in finance courses made probabilistic forecasts of the quarterly changes in the stock prices and earnings of publicly traded companies. Consistent with previous findings (Stael von Holstein, 1972), the overall accuracy of both price and earnings forecasts was very modest; subjects would have been more accurate had they predicted that price changes were equally likely to fall into any of the specified ranges. Also consistent with earlier suggestions of "inverted" expertise effects, undergraduate subjects were more accurate than graduate subjects. Decompositional analyses of subjects' judgments were consistent with the hypothesis that graduate students' relatively poor accuracy was affected by their greater tendency to report forecasts that varied from one stock to the next instead of the same forecast for every one. It is argued that the most plausible explanation is that the graduate subjects responded to cues they thought were predictive, but which actually were not. However, it cannot be ruled out completely that the graduate subjects attended to truly predictive cues, but were simply unable to use them appropriately.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/29290/1/0000351.pd

Why do General Practitioners Decline Training to Improve Management of Medically Unexplained Symptoms?

BACKGROUND: General practitioners’ (GPs) communication with patients presenting medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) has the potential to somatize patients’ problems and intensify dependence on medical care. Several reports indicate that GPs have negative attitudes about patients with MUS. If these attitudes deter participation in training or other methods to improve communication, practitioners who most need help will not receive it. OBJECTIVE: To identify how GPs’ attitudes to patients with MUS might inhibit their participation with training to improve management. DESIGN: Qualitative study. PARTICIPANTS: GPs (N = 33) who had declined or accepted training in reattribution techniques in the context of a research trial. APPROACH: GPs were interviewed and their accounts analysed qualitatively. RESULTS: Although attitudes that devalued patients with MUS were common in practitioners who had declined training, these coexisted, in the same practitioners, with evidence of intuitive and elaborate psychological work with these patients. However, these practitioners devalued their psychological skills. GPs who had accepted training also described working psychologically with MUS but devalued neither patients with MUS nor their own psychological skills. CONCLUSIONS: GPs’ attitudes that suggested disengagement from patients with MUS belied their pursuit of psychological objectives. We therefore suggest that, whereas negative attitudes to patients have previously been regarded as the main barrier to involvement in measures to improve patient management, GPs devaluing of their own psychological skills with these patients may be more important

Ensuring competency in end-of-life care: controlling symptoms

BACKGROUND: Palliative medicine is assuming an increasingly important role in patient care. The Education for Physicians in End-of-life Care (EPEC) Project is an ambitious program to increase core palliative care skills for all physicians. It is not intended to transmit specialty level competencies in palliative care. METHOD: The EPEC Curriculum was developed to be a comprehensive syllabus including trainer notes, multiple approaches to teaching the material, slides, and videos of clinical encounters to trigger discussion are provided. The content was developed through a combination of expert opinion, participant feedback and selected literature review. Content development was guided by the goal of teaching core competencies not included in the training of generalist and non-palliative medicine specialist physicians. RESULTS: Whole patient assessment forms the basis for good symptom control. Approaches to the medical management of pain, depression, anxiety, breathlessness (dyspnea), nausea/vomiting, constipation, fatigue/weakness and the symptoms common during the last hours of life are described. CONCLUSION: While some physicians will have specialist palliative care services upon which to call, most in the world will need to provide the initial approaches to symptom control at the end-of-life