Being rude to your doctor could have fatal consequences, study finds

Have something negative to say to your doctor? Keeping your mouth shut could keep you healthier, researchers at the University of Florida found.

The study, published this month in the journal Pediatrics, observed five different teams of nurses and doctors treating a mannequin infant for conditions including severe respiratory distress and shock. An actress playing the baby’s mother exhibited varying degrees of rudeness toward each team of providers.

Researchers found that the teams that encountered rudeness were deficient in all 11 of the study’s measures, including diagnostic accuracy, information sharing, therapy plan and communication, over the course of all five scenarios. The negative effects lasted the entire day, the study showed.

About 250,000 deaths are attributed to medical errors annually. The researchers estimate that about 40 percent of medical errors are due to patient rudeness.

“People may think that doctors should just ‘get over’ the insult and continue doing their job,” said Amir Erez, a University of Florida professor and study author, in a statement. “However, the study shows that even if doctors have the best intentions in mind, as they usually do, they cannot get over rudeness because it interferes with their cognitive functioning without an ability to control it.”

Muscles and joints adapt to high-mileage running

Long-distance runners have specific joint and muscle advantages over short-distance runners, according to a new study in the Journal of Applied Physiology.

The researchers from Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom studied two groups of runners. In one group, people ran fewer than nine miles a week, while in the other group they ran more than 27 miles a week. All participants had been running for at least six months before the study.

Volunteers ran at four different speeds while researchers measured the activity of their thigh muscles and knee joints using 3-D motion capture cameras.

Researchers found that high-mileage runners had higher knee joint stiffness – a measure the body takes to protect against injury from the force of landing. The research team also noticed a spring-like behavior of the tendons in the high-mileage group, which helped propel the body forward more efficiently.

Hormonal contraception safer for women with diabetes than previously thought

A new study from the UC Davis Health System may encourage physicians to prescribe more hormonal contraception to women with diabetes.

Physicians have historically been reluctant to do so because estrogen-containing contraception increases womens’ risk for heart disease, stroke and blood clots, and women with diabetes are already two to four times more likely than women without diabetes to die of heart disease. But the new study, using a health claims database of about 150,000 diabetic women, found the risk is less severe than expected.

Overall, blood clot events among women in the study were low, with 6.3 events per 1,000 women each year, according to a news release about the study. The contraceptives least likely to be associated with thrombosis were intrauterine devices and subdermal implants. Estrogen patches and progestin-only injections were both associated with slightly increased risks of blood clot events such as stroke.

This story was originally published January 16, 2017 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Being rude to your doctor could have fatal consequences, study finds."