Emergency geriatric surgical admissions

The emergency surgical work load created by patients aged 80 and over in a district hospital was assessed and the results of treatment examined. Over one year 248 patients aged 80 or over were admitted as emergencies, and the overall mortality rate was 21·8%. When terminal disease was excluded mortality rate was 12·5%. These elderly patients had an average length of stay in the acute surgical ward of 14·7 days compared with a mean of 8·4 days for all patients, and all but seven patients were discharged to their original place of referral.Elderly patients do exacerbate the bed shortage in acute surgical wards because they tend to stay longer than younger patients, but these elderly surgical patients imposed only a small load on the inpatient geriatric services, as 78% were discharged straight to their own homes and a further 17% went home after a period on the surgical convalescent wards.     

Trends in paediatric medical admissions.

In the Oxford region from 1975 to 1985 the rate of discharge from paediatric departments, when standardised for age, rose by 88%. This increase was studied by using routinely collected data. It occurred in all age groups and was due mainly to an increase in emergency admissions for acute common childhood illnesses, particularly respiratory and gastro-intestinal diseases. There was no evidence that increasing morbidity accounted for this rise; the change was due to factors in medical care. Over the 11 years the median length of stay fell from 2.4 to 1.5 days and by 1985 40% of children were discharged within a day after admission. The increase in admissions was due to lower thresholds for admission resulting in part from the increased availability of beds because of the diminishing lengths of stay.     

Weight bias in graduate school admissions

Objective:

Whether weight bias occurs in the graduate school admissions process is explored here. Specifically, we examined whether body mass index (BMI) was related to letter of recommendation quality and the number of admissions offers applicants received after attending in‐person interviews.

Design and Methods:

Participants were 97 applicants to a psychology graduate program at a large university in the United States. They reported height, weight, and information about their applications to psychology graduate programs. Participants' letters of recommendation were coded for positive and negative statements as well as overall quality.

Results:

Higher BMI significantly predicted fewer post‐interview offers of admission into psychology graduate programs. Results also suggest this relationship is stronger for female applicants. BMI was not related to overall quality or the number of stereotypically weight‐related adjectives in letters of recommendation. Surprisingly, higher BMI was related to more positive adjectives in letters.

Conclusions:

The first evidence that individuals interviewing applicants to graduate programs may systematically favor thinner applicants is provided here. A conscious or unconscious bias against applicants with extra body weight is a plausible explanation. Stereotype threat and social identity threat are also discussed as explanations for the relationship between BMI and interview success.     

Hospital admissions before and after shipyard closure.

To determine the effect of job loss on health an investigation was made of admissions to hospitals in 887 men five years before and three years after the closure of a Danish shipyard. The control group comprised 441 men from another shipyard. The information on hospital admissions was obtained from the Danish national register of patients. The relative risk of admission in the control group dropped significantly in terms of the number of men admitted from the study group from 1.29 four to five years before closure to 0.74 in the three years after closure. This was especially true of admissions due to accidents (1.33 to 0.46) and diseases of the digestive system (4.53 to 1.03). For diseases of the circulatory system, particularly cardiovascular diseases, the relative risk increased from 0.8 to 1.60, and from 1.0 to 2.6 respectively. These changes in risk of illness after redundancy are probably a consequence of a change from the effects of a high risk work environment to the effects of psychosocial stresses such as job insecurity and unemployment.