Impact of Appointment Waiting Time on Attendance Rates at a Clinical Cancer Genetics Service

The increase in demand for clinical cancer genetics services has impacted the ability to provide services timeously. Given limited resources, this often results in extended appointment waiting times. Over the last 3 years, the Cancer Genetics Service at the National Cancer Centre Singapore has continued to experience a steady increase in demand for its service. Nevertheless, significant no-show rates have been reported. This study sought to determine whether an association exists between appointment waiting times and attendance rates. Data was gathered for all participants meeting inclusion criteria. Attendance rates and appointment waiting times were calculated. The relationship between mean waiting times for those who did and did not attend their scheduled appointments was evaluated using Welch’s t test and linear regression model. The results showed a significant difference in mean appointment waiting times between patients who did and did not attend (32.66 versus 43.50 days respectively; p?<?0.0001). Furthermore, patients who waited for longer than 37 days were significantly less likely to attend. No-show rates increased as the waiting time increased, at a rate of 19.60% per 20 days and 21.40% per 30 days. In conclusion, appointment waiting time is a significant predictor for patient attendance. Strategies to ensure patients receive an appointment within the necessary timeframe at the desired setting are important to ensure that individuals at increased cancer risk attend their appointments in order to manage their cancer risks effectively.     

The notion of professional identity among practitioners working with asylum seekers. A discursive analysis of practitioners’ experience of clinical supervision and working context in work with asylum seekers

The present study analyses interviews that were conducted with eight professionals who have provided therapeutic work to asylum seekers. It explores practitioners’ perspective on the impact of clinical supervision on their work as well as the impact of their working organisational context on the way they experience their professional identity. The findings of the study suggest that the experience of working with this population produces a notion of professional identity that offers a more politicised engagement with clinical work. This politicised notion of professional identity is reflected in the practitioners’ perspective on the use of clinical supervision as well as in the manner in which they position themselves within their organisational context.     

The influence of alcohol and weapon presence on eyewitness memory and confidence

In this quasi-experimental field study, bar drinkers (0.00–0.23% blood alcohol content) viewed a photographic sequence in which a male took a laptop from a helpdesk assistant, either on loan or at gunpoint. Following a brief retention period, participants answered 20 multiple-choice questions about the male, his actions, and details of the scene, then attempted to identify him from a simultaneous target-present or target-absent line-up. Alcohol was associated with a reduction in correct identifications and an increase in false identifications. Surprisingly, the presence of a weapon in the scene enhanced identification accuracy, though wider scene memory was not influenced by alcohol or the weapon. Findings offer some support for the view that alcohol restricts face encoding, perhaps through the narrowing of attention to salient external features (e.g., hair). We also suggest that curiosity about mock-crime perpetrators may produce weapon focus reversals, although the factors that might elicit such curiosity remain unclear.     

The effects of stereotype activation on behavior: a review of possible mechanisms.

Considerable recent research has examined the effects that activated stereotypes have on behavior. Research on both self-stereotype activation and other-stereotype activation has tended to show that people behave in ways consistent with the stereotype (e.g., walking more slowly if the elderly stereotype is activated). Interestingly, however, the dominant account for the behavioral effects of self-stereotype activation involves a hot motivational factor (i.e., stereotype threat), whereas the dominant account for the behavioral effects of other-stereotype activation focuses on a rather cold cognitive explanation (i.e., ideomotor processes). The current review compares and contrasts the behavioral research on self- and other-stereotype activation and concludes that both motivational and cognitive explanations might account for effects in each domain.     

Two Threats To Representation

I consider two threats to the idea that on-line intelligent behaviour (the production offluid and adaptable responses to ongoing sensory input) must or should be explainedby appeal to neurally located representations. The first of these threats occurs whenextra-neural factors account for the kind of behavioural richness and flexibility normallyassociated with representation-based control. I show how this anti-representationalchallenge can be met, if we apply the thought that, to be a representational system,an action-oriented neural system must not only be the source of at least some of theobserved behavioural richness and flexibility, it must also feature two architecturaltraits, namely arbitrariness and homuncularity. Unfortunately, however, this solutionopens the door to our second threat to representation. The homuncularity conditionwill not be met by any system in which the causal contribution of each component ismassively context-sensitive and variable over time. I end by discussing the empiricalbet that biological nervous systems will not exhibit this style of causation.