Background: Burnout is a growing problem among healthcare professionals and may be mitigated and even prevented by measures designed to promote empathy and resilience.Objectives: We studied the association between burnout and empathy in primary care practitioners in Lleida, Spain and investigated possible differences according to age, sex, profession, and place of practice (urban versus rural).Methods: All general practitioners (GPs) and family nurses in the health district of Lleida (population 366 000) were asked by email to anonymously complete the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSPE) between May and July 2014. Tool consistency was evaluated by Cronbach’s α, the association between empathy and burnout by Spearman’s correlation coefficient, and the association between burnout and empathy and sociodemographic variables by the χ2 test.Results: One hundred and thirty-six GPs and 131 nurses (52.7% response rate) from six urban and 16 rural practices participated (78.3% women); 33.3% of respondents had low empathy, while 3.7% had high burnout. The MBI and JSPE were correlated (P < .001) and low burnout was associated with high empathy (P < .05). Age and sex had no influence on burnout or empathy.Conclusion: Although burnout was relatively uncommon in our sample, it was associated with low levels of empathy. This finding and our observation of lower empathy levels in rural settings require further investigation.More empathic primary care practitioners have lower burnout scores.Practitioners working in rural areas have significantly lower levels of empathy than their urban counterparts have.Interventions designed to foster attributes and skills such as empathy, resilience, and doctor–patient communication may help to reduce and prevent burnout.

The need for PPI post-TAVR was frequent and associated with an increased risk of heart failure rehospitalization and lack of LVEF improvement, but not mortality, after a median follow-up of 4 years. Most patients with new PPI post-TAVR exhibited some degree of pacing activity at follow-up.

BackgroundThe study of endogenous insulin secretion may provide relevant insight into the comparison of the natural history of adult onset latent autoimmune diabetes (LADA) with types 1 and 2 diabetes mellitus. The aim of this study was to compare the results of the C-peptide response to mixed-meal stimulation in LADA patients with different disease durations and subjects with type 2 and adult-onset type 1 diabetes.MethodsStimulated C-peptide secretion was assessed using the mixed-meal tolerance test in patients with LADA (n = 32), type 1 diabetes mellitus (n = 33) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (n = 30). All patients were 30 to 70 years old at disease onset. The duration of diabetes in all groups ranged from 6 months to 10 years. The recruitment strategy was predefined to include at least 10 subjects in the following 3 disease onset categories for each group: 6 to 18 months, 19 months to 5 years and 5 to 10 years.ResultsAt all time-points of the mixed-meal tolerance test, patients with LADA had a lower stimulated C-peptide response than the type 2 diabetes group and a higher response than the type 1 diabetes group. The same results were found when the peak or area under the C-peptide curve was measured. When the results were stratified by time since disease onset, a similar pattern of residual insulin secretory capacity was observed.ConclusionsThe present study shows that the magnitude of stimulated insulin secretion in LADA is intermediate between that of type 1 and type 2 diabetes mellitus.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1472-6823-15-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Background-Predictors of antiplatelet therapy discontinuation (ATD) during the first year after drug-eluting stent implantation are poorly known. Methods and Results-This was a prospective study with 3-, 6-, 9-, and 12-month follow-up of patients receiving at least 1 drug-eluting stent between January