A cross-sectional study to ascertain what the Singapore population would regard as material risk in the anaesthesia consent-taking process and identify demographic factors that predict patient preferences in medical decision-making to tailor a more patient-centered informed consent. A survey was performed involving patients 21 years old and above who attended the pre-operative evaluation clinic over a 1-month period in Singapore General Hospital. Questionnaires were administered to assess patients’ perception of material risks, by trained interviewers. Patients’ demographics were obtained. Mann–Whitney U (...) test and Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance was used. Statistical significance was taken at p < 0.05. Four hundred fourteen patients were eligible of which 26 refused to participate and 24 were excluded due to language barrier. 364 patients were recruited. A higher level of education, being employed and younger age group are factors identified in patients who wanted greater participation in medical decisions. Gender, marital status, type of surgery, and previous surgical history did not affect their level of participation. The complications most patients knew about were Nausea, Drowsiness and Surgical Wound Pain. Patients ranked Heart Attack, Death and Stroke as the most significant risks that they wanted to be informed about in greater detail. Most patients wanted to make a joint decision with the anaesthetist, instead of letting the doctor decide or deciding for themselves. Discussion with the anaesthetist is the preferred medium of communication compared to reading a pamphlet or watching a video. Age and educational level can influence medical decision-making. Despite the digital age, most patients still prefer a clinic consult instead of audio-visual multimedia for pre-operative anaesthetic counselling. The local population appears to place greater importance on rare but serious complications compared to common complications. This illustrates the need to contextualize information provided during informed consent to strengthen the doctor-patient relationship. (shrink)

Time, of course, will provide the opportunity for a deeper and fuller contemplation of the historical significance of the June 1983 Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU. But even now it is clear that it went far beyond the mere examination of current questions of the ideological and general political work of the party, above all because the speech of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Comrade Iu. V. Andropov set forth the most important (...) theoretical positions having to do with the preparation of the new version of the program of the CPSU, positions which over the long term will determine the activity of the party and the nation and the development of Soviet society. The importance of the plenum also consisted in the fact that its proceedings brought to light the full scope of the tremendous role played by ideology, by the ideological struggle, and by ideological activity in today's world. There is a struggle going on between two polar opposite world outlooks, two political courses, socialism and imperialism, which is unprecedented throughout the entire postwar period as regards its intensity and ascerbity. There is a struggle taking place for the hearts and minds of billions of people on the planet. The future of mankind depends to no little degree on the outcome of this ideological struggle. Finally, the importance of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU also lay in the fact that it posed a whole series of extremely important practical tasks in the area of ideological activity, including scientific activity, and the task of intensifying the influence of ideology on solving economic, social, political, and educational problems. (shrink)

In the first book of his History Thucydides shows ‘the Spartans and the Allies’, to give the Peloponnesian League its formal title, making the decision that Athens had broken the Thirty Years Peace. After receiving the complaints of various allies, the Spartans discussed in the assembly the conduct of Athens and what should be done about it and ended by voting that the treaty had been broken and that the Athenians were in the wrong . This decision they communicated to (...) the allies who had come complaining, and declared that they wished to summon all the allies and submit it to the vote, ‘in order that after general consultation they might make war, should it so seem good“ . Then, after the Excursus on the Pentekontaetia, Thucydides records the congress of the League in which the Spartans put to the vote whether it was necessary to go to war and the majority voted for war . Thus Sparta proposed and the allies disposed. (shrink)

In REG 73 and 75 I discussed various points connected with the Peace of Philocrates, a number of which have been assailed by M. M. Markle in CQ N.S. 24 in an article entitled ‘The Strategy of Philip in 346 B.C.’. Time passes, and, although de Ste. Croix in his Origins of the Peloponnesian War , p.105, felt able to declare that ‘a book shortly to be published by M. M. Markle makes a valuable and original contribution to our understanding (...) of the Peace of Philocrates’, and Markle himself confirms that a book is indeed forthcoming, some comment on his preliminary comments may be permitted. (shrink)

Una importante causa filosófica e ideológica de la inhumanidad de la sociedad rusa durante las décadas del marxismo-leninismo fue la obsesiva orientación de los marxistas-leninistas hacia el futuro histórico (futuro comunismo) en aras de lo cual, comunidades, culturas y personas podían ser reducidas a medios para alcanzar ese fin histórico. El autor de los debates apoyándose en los propios pensadores rusos de la "tradición clásica", como por ejemplo Herzen, Dostoievsky, Tolstoy, Leontiev y Berdiaev. No se opone a cualquier tipo de (...) orientación de futuro, pero recalca la importancia de las personas actuales. (shrink)

Russell Berman has written a fascinating book about space and alterity in colonial discourse. The book has a Eurocentric focus: the time and world Berman discusses were Eurocentric. So, too, was the Enlightenment, and Berman explicates the encounter between European voyagers and non-European peoples in terms of the “dialectic of enlightenment.” As a device, this works well. It allows a unity of focus in an otherwise varied assortment of topics. As he writes, his book is “neither a history of German (...) colonialism nor an intellectual history of images of non-Europeans in German literature,” but a look at “some specific cases…. (shrink)

Don Carlos de Sigüenza y sor Juana Inés de la Cruz no solo se encuentran en la encrucijada del paso de la edad media a la moderna, y del viejo al nuevo mundo, sino de la vieja a la nueva vía de reflexión y de la vieja a la nueva ciencia. Es lo que se intenta mostrar en estas páginas.