The Patient Experience of Lumbar Puncture at a Teaching Hospital: A Qualitative Descriptive Study (P3.393)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective: We wished to elucidate the patient experience of undergoing a lumbar puncture (LP) at a teaching hospital to identify elements that could be modified to improve the patient experience and integrate patient perspective into standardized LP teaching curricula. Background: Although the LP has been practiced for over 100 years, virtually no literature attends to the experience of adults undergoing LP. Evidence suggests that patients are apprehensive about this procedure. LP training curricula typically have not drawn from the patient experience. Methods: We performed a qualitative study based on in-depth semi-structured, narrative-based interviews conducted with 30 inpatients and outpatients who had recently undergone LP, using maximum variation sampling. Each transcript will be analyzed by multiple co-authors using a hybrid qualitative description and utilization-focused evaluation framework. Results: 30 patient interviews were conducted. The average age of patients was 44.7 years (range: 18 to 80) and 63[percnt] were female. The most common diagnoses were multiple sclerosis, Guillain-Barre syndrome and unclear diagnosis. Emerging themes from the interviews include: 1) many patients find the LP to be benign, but there are patients for whom it is highly painful and frightening; 2) patients with longstanding symptoms without diagnosis may see the LP as a procedure of “last resort,” often expected to give a definitive diagnosis; 3) despite the perceived importance of the procedure, they are often surprised by delays in receiving results; 4) for some patients, back pain after LP can be severe and last days. Conclusions: Preliminary results suggest that although the LP is seen as a simple procedure by physicians, patient perceptions are different. We recommend increased attention to explaining why the test is being performed and quick follow-up of results. A specific plan for back pain control may reduce patient suffering. Quantitative studies measuring the effect of such interventions are warranted.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.019 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".