3,438 research outputs found
The social negotiation of fitness for work: tensions in doctor-patient relationships over medical certification of chronic pain
The UK government is promoting the health benefits of work, in order to change doctors' and patients' behaviour and reduce sickness absence. The rationale is that many people 'off sick' would have better outcomes by staying at work; but reducing the costs of health care and benefits is also an imperative. Replacement of the 'sick note' with the 'fit note' and a national educational programme are intended to reduce sickness-certification rates, but how will these initiatives impact on doctor-patient relationships and the existing tension between the doctor as patient advocate and gate-keeper to services and benefits? This tension is particularly acute for problems like chronic pain where diagnosis, prognosis and work capacity can be unclear. We interviewed 13 doctors and 30 chronic pain patients about their experiences of negotiating medical certification for work absence and their views of the new policies. Our findings highlight the limitations of naĂŻve rationalist approaches to judgements of work absence and fitness for work for people with chronic pain. Moral, socio-cultural and practical factors are invoked by doctors and patients to contest decisions, and although both groups support the fit note's focus on capacity, they doubt it will overcome tensions in the consultation. Doctors value tacit skills of persuasion and negotiation that can change how patients conceptualise their illness and respond to it. Policy-makers increasingly recognise the role of this tacit knowledge and we conclude that sick-listing can be improved by further developing these skills and acknowledging the structural context within which protagonists negotiate sick-listin
Adapting structuration theory to understand the role of reflexivity: Problematization, clinical audit and information systems
This paper is an exploratory account of the further development and application of a hybrid framework,
StructurANTion, that is based on Structuration Theory and Actor Network Theory (ANT). The use of social
theories in general and their use in information systems (IS) research in particular is explored leading to
the use of the framework to examine the concept of what are termed humanchine networks in the context
of clinical audit, within a healthcare Primary Care Trust (PCT). A particular focus is on the manner in which
information systems-based reflexivity contributes to both entrenching a networksâ structurated order as
well as contributing to its emancipatory change. The case study compares clinic-centric and patientcentric
audit and seeks to further extend the understanding of the role of information and information
systems within structurated humanchine activity systems. Conclusions indicate that the use of more
socially informed IS methods and approaches can incorporate more emancipatory ideals and lead to
greater adoption and usage of more relevant and useful clinical information systems and practices
Curvature blow up in Bianchi VIII and IX vacuum spacetimes
The maximal globally hyperbolic development of non-Taub-NUT Bianchi IX vacuum
initial data and of non-NUT Bianchi VIII vacuum initial data is C2
inextendible. Furthermore, a curvature invariant is unbounded in the incomplete
directions of inextendible causal geodesics.Comment: 20 pages, no figures. Submitted to Classical and Quantum Gravit
High-dimensional Ising model selection using -regularized logistic regression
We consider the problem of estimating the graph associated with a binary
Ising Markov random field. We describe a method based on -regularized
logistic regression, in which the neighborhood of any given node is estimated
by performing logistic regression subject to an -constraint. The method
is analyzed under high-dimensional scaling in which both the number of nodes
and maximum neighborhood size are allowed to grow as a function of the
number of observations . Our main results provide sufficient conditions on
the triple and the model parameters for the method to succeed in
consistently estimating the neighborhood of every node in the graph
simultaneously. With coherence conditions imposed on the population Fisher
information matrix, we prove that consistent neighborhood selection can be
obtained for sample sizes with exponentially decaying
error. When these same conditions are imposed directly on the sample matrices,
we show that a reduced sample size of suffices for the
method to estimate neighborhoods consistently. Although this paper focuses on
the binary graphical models, we indicate how a generalization of the method of
the paper would apply to general discrete Markov random fields.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOS691 the Annals of
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Asymptotic silence-breaking singularities
We discuss three complementary aspects of scalar curvature singularities:
asymptotic causal properties, asymptotic Ricci and Weyl curvature, and
asymptotic spatial properties. We divide scalar curvature singularities into
two classes: so-called asymptotically silent singularities and non-generic
singularities that break asymptotic silence. The emphasis in this paper is on
the latter class which have not been previously discussed. We illustrate the
above aspects and concepts by describing the singularities of a number of
representative explicit perfect fluid solutions.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figure
How does 'banter' influence trainee doctors' choice of career? A qualitative study
Following publication of the original article, the authors reported an error in the first paragraph of the 'Results' section. The correction details are available at https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-019-1707-7Peer reviewedPublisher PD
New Non-Diagonal Singularity-Free Cosmological Perfect-Fluid Solution
We present a new non-diagonal G2 inhomogeneous perfect-fluid solution with
barotropic equation of state p=rho and positive density everywhere. It
satisfies the global hyperbolicity condition and has no curvature singularity
anywhere. This solution is very simple in form and has two arbitrary constants.Comment: Latex, no figure
Geographic Gossip: Efficient Averaging for Sensor Networks
Gossip algorithms for distributed computation are attractive due to their
simplicity, distributed nature, and robustness in noisy and uncertain
environments. However, using standard gossip algorithms can lead to a
significant waste in energy by repeatedly recirculating redundant information.
For realistic sensor network model topologies like grids and random geometric
graphs, the inefficiency of gossip schemes is related to the slow mixing times
of random walks on the communication graph. We propose and analyze an
alternative gossiping scheme that exploits geographic information. By utilizing
geographic routing combined with a simple resampling method, we demonstrate
substantial gains over previously proposed gossip protocols. For regular graphs
such as the ring or grid, our algorithm improves standard gossip by factors of
and respectively. For the more challenging case of random
geometric graphs, our algorithm computes the true average to accuracy
using radio
transmissions, which yields a factor improvement over
standard gossip algorithms. We illustrate these theoretical results with
experimental comparisons between our algorithm and standard methods as applied
to various classes of random fields.Comment: To appear, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processin
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