How do lay people come to trust the Automatic External Defibrillator?

Barriers and facilitators to public access defibrillation in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: a systematic review

Public access defibrillation initiatives make automated external defibrillators available to the public. This facilitates earlier defibrillation of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims and could save many lives. It is currently only used for a minority of cases. The aim of this systematic review was to identify barriers and facilitators to public access defibrillation. A comprehensive literature review was undertaken defining formal search terms for a systematic review of the literature in March 2017. Studies were included if they considered reasons affecting the likelihood of public access defibrillation and presented original data. An electronic search strategy was devised searching MEDLINE and EMBASE, supplemented by bibliography and related-article searches. Given the low-quality and observational nature of the majority of articles, a narrative review was performed. Sixty-four articles were identified in the initial literature search. An additional four unique articles were identified from the electronic search strategies. The following themes were identified related to public access defibrillation: knowledge and awareness; willingness to use; acquisition and maintenance; availability and accessibility; training issues; registration and regulation; medicolegal issues; emergency medical services dispatch-assisted use of automated external defibrillators; automated external defibrillator-locator systems; demographic factors; other behavioural factors. In conclusion, several barriers and facilitators to public access defibrillation deployment were identified. However, the evidence is of very low quality and there is not enough information to inform changes in practice. This is an area in urgent need of further high-quality research if public access defibrillation is to be increased and more lives saved. PROSPERO registration number CRD42016035543.

A national study of breast and colorectal cancer patients’ decision-making for novel personalized medicine genomic diagnostics

Aim: Molecular diagnostics are increasingly being used to help guide decision-making for personalized medical treatment of breast and colorectal cancer patients. The main aim of this study was to better understand and determine breast and colorectal cancer patients’ decision-making strategies and the trade-offs they make in deciding about characteristics of molecular genomic diagnostics for breast and colorectal cancer. Patients & methods: We surveyed a nationally representative sample of 300 breast and colorectal cancer patients using a previously developed web-administered instrument. Eligibility criteria included patients aged 18 years and older with either breast or colorectal cancer. We explored several attributes and attribute levels of molecular genomic diagnostics in 20 scenarios. Results: Our analysis revealed that both breast and colorectal cancer patients weighted the capability of molecular genomic diagnostics to determine the probability of treatment efficacy as being of greater importance than information provided to detect adverse events. The probability of either false-positive or -negative results was ranked highly as a potential barrier by both breast and colorectal patients. However, 78.6% of breast cancer patients ranked the possibility of a ‘false-negative test result leading to undertreatment’ higher than the ‘chance of a false positive, which may lead to overtreatment’ (68%). This finding contrasted with the views of colorectal cancer patients who ranked the chance of a false positive as being of greater concern than a false negative (72.8 vs 63%). Overall, cancer patients exhibited a high willingness to accept and pay for genomic diagnostic tests, especially among breast cancer patients. Cancer patients seek a test accuracy rate of 90% or higher. Breast and colorectal cancer patients’ decisions about genomic diagnostics are influenced more by the probability of being cured than by avoiding potential severe adverse events. Conclusion: This study provides insights into the relative weight that breast and colorectal cancer patients place on various aspects of molecular genomic diagnostics, and the trade-offs they are willing to make among attributes of such tests.

Validation of a trust in medical technology instrument

A patient's trusting attitude towards technology used in their medical care may be a predictor of acceptance or rejection of the technology and, by extension, the physician. The aim of this study was to rigorously determine the validity of an instrument for measuring patients' trust in medical technology. Instrument validity was established based on a framework, which included test and data evidence for validity assessment. The framework for validity assessment evaluates the instrument on content, substantive, structural, generalizability, external and consequential aspects of validity. The results of the current study show that the instrument is reliable and valid for assessing a patient's trust in obstetric medical technology.

Trust in Medical Technology by Patients and Health Care Providers in Obstetric Work Systems

Multiple types of users (i.e. patients and care providers) have experiences with the same technologies in health care environments and may have different processes for developing trust in those technologies. The objective of this study was to assess how patients and care providers make decisions about the trustworthiness of mutually used medical technology in an obstetric work system. Using a grounded theory methodology, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 patients who had recently given birth and 12 obstetric health care providers to examine the decision-making process for developing trust in technologies used in an obstetric work system. We expected the two user groups to have similar criteria for developing trust in the technologies, though we found patients and physicians differed in processes for developing trust. Trust in care providers, the technologies' characteristics and how care providers used technology were all related to trust in medical technology for the patient participant group. Trustworthiness of the system and trust in self were related to trust in medical technology for the physician participant group. Our findings show that users with different perspectives of the system have different criteria for developing trust in medical technologies.