Homepage Round-Up: Courtesy Goes a Long Way in Limiting Patient Pain; Sociodemographic Factors Impact Surgical Board Passage Rates; and More

Here are the top stories covered by DocWire News this week in the Homepage section. In this week’s edition of the round-up: health care providers can improve pain management when drawing blood by simply showing kindness to patients; sociodemographic factors such as race, gender, and family status impact surgical board passage rates; people who exercise before breakfast burn significantly more fat than those who exercise after breakfast; and college football players who undergo rapid weight gain incur a higher cardiovascular risk.

Health care providers (HCPs) can go a long way in managing patient pain simply by being kind and courteous when drawing their blood, according to that study that was presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2019 annual meeting. To conduct this study, they analyzed the responses of 4,740 adult patients who were hospitalized for a variety of conditions and illness pertaining questions about pain control and HCP courtesy. The two pain related questions were posed on a 1-4 scale, from 1 (never) to 4 (always). Separately, the researchers asked patients to rate the courtesy of the HCP who took their blood from 1 (very poor) to 5 (very good). The results showed that 82% of patients answered 4 when asked how often the staff did everything they could to help them with their pain and 65% answered 4 when asked how often their pain was well-controlled. Moreover, the researchers observed that patients who answered with a 5 with respect to HCP courtesy were 390% more likely to have rated their pain control as a 4 (the maximum), than those who rated their provider less courteous.

The findings of a recent study published in JAMA Surgery suggest that sociodemographic factors such as race, ethnicity, sex, and family status have an adverse impact on passing the American Board of Surgery examination. In this national and multi-institutional prospective observational cohort study, researchers surveyed 662 general surgery trainees. The researchers wrote of the study results that: “Resident race, ethnicity, sex, and family status at internship were observed to be associated with board passage rates. There are multiple possible explanations for these worrisome observations that need to be explored.”

People who perform exercise before breakfast burn twice as much fat as those exercise after breakfast, according to the findings of a new study published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. In this six-week study, comprised of 30 obese or overweight men, the researchers and compared results between two intervention groups – one who exercised before breakfast, and one who exercised after breakfast, along with a control group who made no changes. One of the study’s researchers stated that: “We found that the men in the study who exercised before breakfast burned double the amount of fat than the group who exercised after. Importantly, whilst this didn’t have any effect on weight loss, it did dramatically improve their overall health.”

College football players who rapidly gain weight and develop high blood pressure (BP) have an elevated cardiovascular risk, according to a study published in JAMA Cardiology. In this study, researchers assessed 126 athletes recruited as freshmen between June 2014 and June 2017. The results of the study showed there were significant increases in weight, systolic BP, and pulse-wave velocity among the players, and weight gain was associated with both arterial stiffening, as well as the development of concentric left ventricular hypertrophy, and increased systolic blood pressure was linked with arterial stiffening and the development of concentric left ventricular hypertrophy.