Managing Audit
Michael Drury, Lynne Hobden-Clarke in The Practice Manager, 2017
The words ‘standards’ and ‘criteria’ are so commonly used in any discussion of audit that they are worth spending a few minutes defining what we mean by them. Essentially, standards are the levels of performance the auditors have set themselves to achieve. They contain an element of judgement, for they are an amalgam of what is desirable and what is possible. It may be desirable for the doctor always to see the ear drum of a child with earache before diagnosing otitis media but an attempt to do that in a child in whom the drum is obscured by wax may have to be abandoned for the sake of not causing additional and, perhaps unnecessary, stress to the patient.
Checkpoint 3 (Handover): communication skills
Roger Neighbour in The Inner Consultation, 2018
Most problems presented to general practitioners have more than one possible solution. An ear-ache might develop into suppurative otitis media needing antibiotics, or it might settle down with analgesia and a decongestant. Antidepressants might help a patient, but so might counselling, or relaxation, or family therapy, or a psychiatric referral. Speculate out loud on some of the available options, so that the patient doesn’t have to do all the searching for alternatives if she happens not to like your own favourite suggestion.
Ear, nose and throat (ENT)
Janesh K Gupta in Core Clinical Cases in Surgery and Surgical Specialties, 2014
The most likely causes of earache in the adult are either otitis externa or referred otalgia. Young adults may have temporomandibular problems and questions about chewing and pain will help to determine if this is the cause. Elderly people may have problems with the cervical spine, which also causes a referred otalgia. Otitis externa may go from ear to ear and there is a period of irritation followed by self-inflicted trauma and secondary infection. The cycle repeats itself.
Is COVID-19 associated with self-reported audio-vestibular symptoms?
Published in International Journal of Audiology, 2022
Arwa AlJasser, Walid Alkeridy, Kevin J. Munro, Christopher J. Plack
The main section was designed with a five-point Likert scale to assess any self-reported change over time in nine symptoms under four categories.Olfactory and gustatory abnormalities which included disturbances in sense of smell and taste.Auditory symptoms which included hearing abilities (changes assessed for four variables: sense of hearing, ease of conversing by telephone, ability to follow a conversation with background noise, and preferred volume while listening to various media); non-pulsatile tinnitus; and hyperacusis (i.e. stress, irritation or sensitivity caused by noise and environmental sounds).Dizziness which included rotatory vertigo (the feeling that the person, or things around person, are spinning or moving); and stability (unsteadiness/light-headedness, losing balance or feeling unsteady when walking, climbing stairs, or picking something up off the floor).Ear symptoms which included ear pressure; and otalgia (ear pain).
Hearing loss prevalence and risk factors among older adults in China
Published in International Journal of Audiology, 2018
Rui Gong, Xiangyang Hu, Chen Gong, Mo Long, Rui Han, Lijun Zhou, Fang Wang, Xiaoying Zheng
Data on demographic variables, history of noise exposure in environment, ototoxic drugs, chemical reagents, and medical covariates were obtained from interviews. Demographic variables included age, gender, area, education, and household income. Education and household income were collapsed into a 6 and 3 level variable, respectively. Medical covariates mainly included non-infectious diseases, such as diabetes (based on self-reported diagnosis and/or current use of insulin or other diabetic medications), hypertension (told by physician on two or more visits about hypertension diagnosis), hyperlipidaemia, and atherosclerosis (self-reported diagnosis), which were high prevalence in adults aged 60 years and older. And ear diseases mainly included ear pain, auricle malformation, wax, foreign body, otitis externa, acute otitis media, chronic suppurative otitis media, secretory otitis media, and dry perforation.
The Hebrew version of the Eustachian tube dysfunction questionnaire-7
Published in Hearing, Balance and Communication, 2018
Omer J. Ungar, Oren Cavel, Gilad S. Golan, Yahav Oron, Oshri Wasserzug, Ophir Handzel
The ETDQ-7 as designed by McCoul et al. [3] is a 7-item questionnaire, in which each item relates to a symptom of ETD. The participants were asked to grade the severity of symptoms during the preceding month on a scale from 1 to 7 where 1–2 = no problem, 3–5 = moderate problem and 6–7 = severe problem. The symptoms that were taken into account included a pressure sensation, ear pain, aural fullness, otologic symptoms during upper respiratory tract infection or sinusitis, tinnitus or crackling noises and muffled hearing. A double-translation method was applied by an English-to-Hebrew translation by two native English and Hebrew speakers using back and forth steps as well as a pre-test [5]. One translator is an ENT surgeon and the second one is a professional English editor. Both speak English and Hebrew as a mother language.