Research Roundup
Study reveals surgeons have most complaints of bad behavior
Co-worker reports about physicians’ unprofessional behaviors from 193 hospitals were analyzed for a study reported in JAMA Network Open. It turns out that surgeons draw the most complaints.
William Cooper, MD, MPH, Steven Webber, MBChB, and colleagues pulled reports from the Coworker Observation Reporting System (CORS), which is administered by the Vanderbilt Center for Patient and Professional Advocacy. CORS is part of a program of tiered interventions aimed at curbing unprofessional behaviors.
The likelihood of being named in a CORS report varied significantly by specialty area. Surgeons were most likely at 13.8%, followed by nonsurgeon proceduralists, 12.0%; emergency medicine physicians, 10.9%; and nonsurgeon nonproceduralists, 5.6%.
AI could help patients ask their care teams better questions
AI has proven better than doctors at drafting responses to patients’ written questions. Now, a Vanderbilt University Medical Center study suggests greater advantages in using AI to help patients write more effective messages to their care teams.
Siru Liu, PhD, Adam Wright, PhD, and colleagues explored using AI to help patients craft more effective messages to their health care providers through patient portals.
In a blinded test reported in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, the team found their custom-trained, large language model, CLAIR, produced follow-up questions with similar clarity and conciseness, and higher utility, than actual follow-up questions written by the care team.
By comparison, the GPT-4 model from OpenAI generated more complete but less clear questions for the scenarios tested.
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants R00LM014097, R01AG062499, R01LM013995).
What’s all the tuft about?
Intestinal tuft cells are a rare cell type first identified in 1956, and a recent study suggests the unique cytoskeleton of these cells could unlock new insights into human health.
Tuft cells have finger-like protrusions that extend from their apex, creating a “tuft” that projects into the lumen of the gut. These structures are supported by actin, a molecule important for a cell’s structural integrity.
Tuft cells can sense harmful microorganisms, like parasitic worms, and generate an immune response. Tuft cells also have roles in restoring the intestine from chronic inflammation in ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease by secreting anti-inflammatory molecules.
Graduate student Jennifer Silverman and her mentor Matthew Tyska, PhD, who holds the Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair in Cell and Developmental Biology, utilized advanced imaging techniques to detail the microscopic structure of intestinal tuft cells. Using single-cell sequencing data from the laboratory of Ken Lau, PhD, professor of Cell and Developmental Biology, they identified tuft cell-specific actin binding proteins that could support both the tuft cytoskeleton and cellular transport of molecules along this structure. The researchers suggest these tuft cell-specific proteins aid in the sensing of danger molecules and the transport of tuft cell-derived anti-inflammatory molecules.
Their discovery can potentially be harnessed to battle intestinal inflammatory diseases.