Edgecombe Community College

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that has no known cure. PD’s treatment largely relies on early and accurate diagnosis, which is currently based on clinical evaluations, neurological exams, patient histories and the observation of motor symptoms, such as bradykinesia, tremors, and rigidity. However, due to the overlap of these symptoms with other neurological conditions and the lack of conclusive diagnostic tests, PD diagnosis is often prolonged (up to years) and may be inaccurate. This research explores the use of Random Forest, a machine learning (ML) algorithm, to enhance the speed and accuracy of PD diagnosis. Our model has been trained on a medical dataset consisting of patient demographics and biomarker data, as they are considered some of the earliest indicators of the disease. The Random Forest model allows for powerful pattern recognition by integrating multiple decision trees, offering reliable diagnostic support for current clinical practices. Our findings demonstrate that ML-driven approaches have the potential to accelerate PD detection while preserving a high degree of accuracy, offering promising supplementary tools to traditional diagnostic methods.

With increasing availability of immediate patient access to pathology reports, it is imperative that all physicians be equipped to discuss pathology reports with their patients. No validated measures exist to assess how pathology report findings are communicated during patient encounters. To pilot a scoring rubric evaluating medical students' communication of pathology reports to standardized patients. The rubric was iteratively developed using the Pathology Competencies for Medical Education and Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education pathology residency milestones. After a brief training program, third- and fourth-year medical students completed 2 standardized patient encounters, presenting simulated benign and malignant pathology reports. Encounters were video recorded and scored by 2 pathologists to calculate overall and item-specific interrater reliability. All students recognized the need for pathology report teaching, which was lacking in their medical curriculum. Interrater agreement was high for malignant report scores (intraclass correlation coefficient, 0.65) but negligible for benign reports (intraclass correlation coefficient, 0). On malignant reports, most items demonstrated good interrater agreement, except for discussing the block (cassette) summary, explaining the purpose of the pathology report, and acknowledging uncertainty. Participating students (N = 9) felt the training was valuable given their limited prior exposure to pathology reports. This pilot study demonstrates the feasibility of using a structured rubric to assess the communication of pathology reports to patients. Our findings also provide a scalable example of training on pathology report communication, which can be incorporated in the undergraduate medical curriculum to equip more physicians to facilitate patients' understanding of their pathology reports.

Xülasə Məqalədə Xalçaların və xalça məmulatlarının təsnifatı zamanı onların xovlu və xovsuz növləri bölünməsi və aralarındakı fərqləri göstərir. Əsas olaraq isə Xovlu xalçaların növlərinin öz aralarında fərqləndirən önəmli səciyyələrindən bəhs edir. Şirvan xalçaçılıq məktəbinin xovsuz xalçalara qatdığı zənginlik, fərqlilik, rəng, forma və kompozisiyaların təcəssümü öz əksini tapmışdır. Xalçaçılığın başlandığı gündən bu günə qədər keçdiyi yol, tarixi və dəyişimlərindən bəhs edilir.

Palliative care has become an integral part of today's health care system. Inclusion of palliative care has been shown to positively affect patient satisfaction and can also impact medical costs. One of the ways palliative care can have such influence is through the development of prognostic awareness or a patient's understanding of their likely illness trajectory. Although palliative care programs have multiplied in general, there are still notable discrepancies in program availability, particularly in smaller rural hospitals. Despite numerous health care thought leaders' recommendations regarding the "ideal" palliative care team, this is not always feasible due to resource allocation. This article aims to describe 1 rural hospital's development of and initial outcomes from a hospital-based palliative care program.

Introduction: Primary care physicians serve on the front lines of care and provide comprehensive care to patients who may have difficulty accessing subspecialists. However, not enough students are entering residency in primary care fields to meet the primary care physician shortage. The authors sought to compare primary care match rates among graduates of medical schools in the state of North Carolina from 2014 to 2018. Methods: The 4 allopathic medical schools in the state of North Carolina were selected for this study: East Carolina University (ECU) Brody School of Medicine, University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill, Duke School of Medicine, and Wake Forest School of Medicine. Primary care specialties were defined as family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, and internal medicine/pediatrics. The proportion of students matching to a residency in any of these fields, and in each specific field, was compared across schools. Results: Over 2014-2018, 214 ECU Brody School of Medicine graduates, 386 UNC graduates, 165 Duke graduates, and 196 Wake Forest graduates matched to a primary care specialty. ECU had the highest proportion of its graduates match in a primary care specialty (53%, compared with 34% to 45% at other schools; P < .001), and was particularly distinguished by having the highest proportions of graduates match to residencies in family medicine (18%) and pediatrics (16%). Conclusion: During the study period of 2014-2018, the ECU Brody School of Medicine matched more medical students into primary care specialties than the other medical schools in the state. This school’s community-driven mission and rural location, among other characteristics facilitating sustained student commitment to primary care careers, can inform the development of new medical schools in the United States to overcome the primary care physician shortage.

The relationship between the birth order and materialism scores was investigated using materialism conceptualized as a consumer value. Data were collected from 275 alumni of a major southwestern university. The analysis indicated that first-borns in this sample scored significantly lower on materialism than younger siblings.