Healthcare professionals’ involvement in breaking bad news to newly diagnosed patients with motor neurodegenerative conditions: a qualitative study

Purpose Research on breaking bad news (BBN) in healthcare has mostly focused on the doctor-patient interaction during a single consultation. However, it has been increasingly recognised that BBN is a wider process that also involves other healthcare professionals. This qualitative study explored non-medical1 healthcare professionals’ involvement in BBN to newly diagnosed patients with motor neurodegenerative conditions in the UK. Materials and methods 19 healthcare professionals working with people with motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease or Huntington’s disease took part in individual, semi-structured interviews which were analysed using thematic analysis. Results Four themes were constructed: dealing with the diagnostic aftermath, unpacking the diagnosis, breaking bad news as a balancing act and empowering patients to regain control over their health and lives. Participants reported being broadly involved in BBN by supporting patients with negative diagnostic experiences, re-iterating diagnostic information and helping patients understand the impact of their condition. The challenges of effectively breaking bad news and how these difficult conversations could help empower patients were also emphasised. Conclusions BBN was a critical and challenging aspect of healthcare professionals’ clinical work with newly diagnosed patients with motor neurodegenerative conditions. Besides providing information, BBN was perceived as a way to educate patients, encourage them to make decisions and prepare for the future

Living with a long term physical health condition: psychological experiences of older lifestyle migrants

An increasing number of people are living with at least one long term health condition or chronic illness (Ham, 2006). One concept within chronic illness research increasingly regarded as important is psychological adjustment. In this study this is understood as the result of a series of adaptations to maintain a positive view of the self and the world in the face of a health problem’ (Sharpe & Curran, 2006, p. 1161). One example of when successful psychological adjustment to a long term condition faces a number of additional challenges is when it is experienced in a different social context – for example as an expatriate or migrant living in a different country from that of birth and early life. One area of migration which is of particular interest given its increase and relative lack of research is ‘lifestyle’ migration (Benson & O'Reilly, 2009). This type of migration is ‘the very antithesis of being economically motivated, and [is] undertaken by those who prioritise quality-of-life and aesthetic concerns over income’ (King, 2002, p. 100). Many lifestyle migrants tend to be older (e.g., retirees) (Huete & Mantecon, 2011) and many relocate from northern Europe to Southern Europe which, through the search for sunnier climates, has also been referred to as ‘heliotropic migration’ (King, Warnes, & Williams, 2000). Although figures are difficult to determine given the lack of data on specific types of migration within Europe, it is generally accepted that lifestyle migration in older north European citizens to southern Europe is on the rise (e.g., King, 2002). Indeed, in a study looking at the number of foreign nationals in one part of Spain, the Costa Blanca, 78% of the inhabitants of one town are foreign nationals and 92% of those are from the EU. Consequently, the aim of the study was to provide an in-depth idiographic account of the psychological processes involved in the adjustment of older UK citizens with a long term physical health condition currently living in Crete, the largest of the Greek islands

Youth tubing the Greek crisis: a cultural-historical perspective

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This world is not enough: The dialectics of critical psychology.

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Cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the Greek version of the Family Questionnaire for assessing expressed emotion

Expressed emotion (EE) has proved to be an established factor in short-term relapse in schizophrenia the aim of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Greek version of the Family Questionnaire (FQ), a brief self-report questionnaire measuring the EE status of relatives of patients with schizophrenia in terms of criticism (CC) and emotional overinvolvement (EOI) the translated and adapted 20-item FQ was administered to 176 family caregivers of patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Caregivers' burden (Family Burden Scale) and psychological distress (General Health Questionnaire-28) were also evaluated the findings indicated that the Greek version displays a two-factor structure with two subscales of EE - CC and EOI - with 10 items each, similarly to the original version the convergent validity of the subscales was highly supported by correlations with caregivers' burden and psychological distress the Cronbach's α coefficient measuring internal consistency for the two scales were 0.90 for CC and 0.82 for EOI the test-retest correlation coefficients measuring reproducibility were 0.99 and 0.98 for CC and EOI, respectively the Greek version of the FQ appears to be a valid and reliable instrument to be used in both research and clinical assessment of family EE. © 2014 Elsevier Inc

YouTube, young people and the socioeconomic crises in Greece

The overriding aim of this paper is to analyse Greek adolescents' digital video making and sharing, the voices they represent in their videos, the dialogical interactions they evoke, and how this activity relates to their everyday lives as they traverse the crises that have taken hold in their country. A focused search of YouTube content was conducted which yielded five videos for analysis. These texts were ‘re-read’ using multimodal analysis and the resulting ‘texts-on-texts’ were analysed using thematic analysis. Via the creation of YouTube videos young people visually convey and communicate their representations of the crises and provide a rich analysis of how the following themes define their lived-experiences: (a) ‘unoccupied youth and occupied dreams yield a sacrificed generation’; (2) ‘blanket condemnation of powerbrokers, their messengers, and mesmerizing mediums’; and, (3) ‘hypnagogia and the insidious enslavement of the psyche’