Paging: a Collection of Short Stories

Introduction: Paging is a series of thematically interconnected short stories that take place at a single fictional urban hospital center. The guiding questions that the stories explore are twofold: other than doctors and patients, what kinds of people spend their time in a hospital? And, what kind of place is the hospital for these people? Methods: The background research for Paging began by exploring written works of fiction, nonfiction, and memoir set in hospitals. After I had developed a set of guiding research questions, I spent the summer at a major hospital in New York City, where I was able to observe the people and employees that comprised the environment of an urban medical center. These observations were used draft fiction about the kinds of dilemmas various characters in a hospital might grapple with on a daily basis. Results: Paging is a series of three short stories that explore the lives of three different hospital employees at the same hospital center. The first story is about a medical assistant at an outpatient clinic who encounters an ethical dilemma that brings his personal life to work. The second is about a custodian who gets to know the patients of a hospital in a very different, but equally intimate, manner to the doctors and nurses who take care of the patients’ medical needs. The third is about a woman who assists in the distribution of organs that have been harvested for transplant. Discussion: We often think of the hospital as a place where patients go to seek care from doctors. In reality, the hospital is a far richer environment than this. Paging explores the other inhabitants of a hospital that allow it to be a bustling ecosystem, and offers stories from perspectives that are often overlooked

Stop Requested: A Collection of ALS Poetry

Introduction: This project aims to use poetry to convey the lessons, challenges, and experiences encountered by patients in the Jefferson Weinberg ALS Center diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). This will not only allow for individual patients to freely discuss, reminisce, and reflect on their journey with this disease, but distributing the collection to our community will aid in a better understanding of ALS patients, serve to humanize ALS, and deepen the empathic beyond between community members and patients. Additionally, it will create an environment in which both myself and physicians can reflect on the human experience and how disease affects a patient holistically. Methods: A questionnaire was drafted and used to guide conversations with patients about their experiences living with ALS. After the interview, the conversation was analyzed for themes and a first draft of a poem inspired by their story was created. Edits were obtained from advisors and peers, and poems were then organized into a final collection, to be printed and distributed to clinic patients and the Jefferson community. Results: This project resulted in a printed collection of poetry titled Stop Requested: A Collection of ALS Poetry. The final product is to be distributed to each patient at the Jefferson Weinberg ALS Center and more broadly to the ALS and Jefferson communities. This collection details intimate accounts of confusion, suffering, fight, hope, and change that ALS patients experience during their disease progression. Discussion: By using poetry to portray the human experience specific to ALS, this collection helps to connect patients to each other, providers to patients, and community members to patients. The experiences outlined in this collection help to build compassion within the medical field and community for those experiencing ALS and offers a unique perspective of the spectrum of suffering, and triumph in neurodegenerative disease

What It’s Like to Study the Brain: A Creative Exploration

Introduction: In recent years, medicine and the humanities have evolved to be adopted synergistically in dual practice. Employing principles of narrative medicine, this multimodal piece explores the experience of hunger to draw parallels between creativity in art and creativity in medicine. By stimulating reading, writing, listening, and seeing, this account aims to represent these faculties as necessary to both art and medicine and to exemplify synergy between the two. Methods: As codified by the field of narrative medicine, methods consisted of a repetitive practice of close reading, writing, and reflecting. In viewing medicine as interconnected provider-patient narrative, scholars of narrative medicine write to contribute to these accounts of “self”. This engages them in healing, intersubjective contact that enhances empathy, self-awareness, and ethical consideration. This project serves a dual function: first, as an account of the enrichment of skills of observation, interpretation, and reflection that result from a purposeful practice of narrative medicine and second, as a platform for engagement for those who wish to develop their own practice. Results: Reflection on the neuroscience and psychology inherent to medical education has yielded six (6) chapters of topical creative writing consisting of short story, prose, and poetry: hunger (1) for knowledge, (2) for meaning, (3) for food, (4) as ambition, (5) as struggle, and (6) for wellness. Each chapter consists of original writing resulting from subjective and objective experience in medicine such as neurosurgical research and patient interaction at needle exchange clinics. Discussion: This project serves as a tangible representation of the multimodality of both art and medicine. It underscores the importance of narrative in the enrichment of empathy within medical practice and enhances accessibility to narrative medicine by inviting active engagement. Further extrapolations would facilitate more opportunities for narrative training based on this project, such as workshops or interactive exhibitions

An efficient numerical algorithm for a multiphase tumour model

This paper is concerned with the development and application of optimally efficient numerical methods for the simulation of vascular tumour growth. This model used involves the flow and interaction of four different, but coupled, phases which are each treated as incompressible fluids, Hubbard and Byrne (2013). A finite volume scheme is used to approximate mass conservation, with conforming finite element schemes to approximate momentum conservation and an associated equation. The principal contribution of this paper is the development of a novel block preconditioner for solving the linear systems arising from the discrete momentum equations at each time step. In particular, the preconditioned system has both a solution time and a memory requirement that is shown to scale almost linearly with the problem size

New mean field theories for the liquid-vapor transition of charged hard spheres

The phase behavior of the primitive model of electrolytes is studied in the framework of various mean field approximations obtained recently by means of methods pertaining to statistical field theory (CAILLOL, J.-M., 2004, \textit{J. Stat. Phys.}, \textbf{115}, 1461). The role of the regularization of the Coulomb potential at short distances is discussed in details and the link with more traditional approximations of the theory of liquids is discussed. The values computed for the critical temperatures, chemical potentials, and densities are compared with available Monte Carlo data and other theoretical predictions.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, 3 table

Mott Transition vs Multicritical Phenomenon of Superconductivity and Antiferromagnetism -- Application to κ\kappa-(BEDT-TTF)2_2X --

Interplay between the Mott transition and the multicritical phenomenon of d-wave superconductivity (SC) and antiferromagnetism (AF) is studied theoretically. We describe the Mott transition, which is analogous to a liquid-gas phase transition, in terms of an Ising-type order parameter $\eta$. We reveal possible mean-field phase diagrams produced by this interplay. Renormalization group analysis up to one-loop order gives flows of coupling constants, which in most cases lead to fluctuation-induced first-order phase transitions even when the SO(5) symmetry exists betwen the SC and AF. Behaviors of various physical quantities around the Mott critical point are predicted. Experiments in $\kappa$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$X are discussed from this viewpoint.Comment: 4 pages, 9 figures, to appear in J. Phys. Soc. Jp

Older adults experiences of rehabilitation in acute health care

Rehabilitation is a key component of nursing and allied healthcare professionals’ roles in most health and social care settings. This paper reports on stage 2 of an action research project to ascertain older adult's experience of rehabilitation. Twenty postdischarge interviews were conducted and the interview transcripts were analysed using thematic content analysis. All older adults discharged from an acute older acute rehabilitation ward to their own homes in the community were eligible to participate. The only exclusion criterion was older adults who were thought to be unable to give consent to participate by the nurse in charge and the researcher. Whilst 92 older adults were eligible to participate in this research study, only 20 were interviewed. The findings from this study suggest that older adults valued communication with health professionals but were aware of their time constraints that hindered communication. This study suggests that both nurses and allied health professionals are not actively providing rehabilitative services to promote health and well-being, which contradicts the focus of active ageing. Furthermore, there was evidence of unmet needs on discharge, and older adults unable to recall the professions that were involved in their interventions and the rationale for therapy input. It is suggested that further research is needed to explore the effectiveness of allied health rehabilitation in the acute setting. This study highlights the need for further research into older adults’ perceptions of the rehabilitation process in the acute setting