Evidence suggests that patients do better when their expectations
Evidence suggests that patients do better when their expectations about specific benefits of nursing care are discussed and met. Design a “comfort contract” whereby patients or their surrogates designate an expected level of postsurgical overall comfort, and also where they can specify chronic discomforts and interventions that they use at home for relief.
Until, finally, various different empirically determined “corrective factors” were unified into the simple equations of General Relativity.
And the people in that alternate Earth could say, “Even though the final equation was simple, there was no way you could possibly know to arrive at that answer from just the perihelion precession of Mercury. It takes many, many additional experiments. You must have measured time running slower in a stronger gravitational field; you must have measured light bending around stars. Only then could you imagine our unified theory of gravitation. No, not even a perfect intelligence could know it in advance for there would be many ad-hoc theories consistent with the perihelion precession alone.”
In our world, Einstein didn’t even use the perihelion precession of Mercury, except for verification of his answer. Einstein sat down in his armchair and thought about how he would have designed the universe, and how he thought a universe should look—for example, that you shouldn’t ought to be able to distinguish yourself accelerating in one direction, from the rest of the universe accelerating in the other direction.
And Einstein executed the whole long (multi-year) chain of armchair reasoning, without making any mistakes that would have required further experimental evidence to pull him back on track.
Rather than observe the planets, and infer what laws might cover their gravitation, Einstein was observing the other laws of physics, and inferring what new law might follow the same pattern. Einstein wasn’t finding an equation that covered the motion of gravitational bodies. Einstein was finding a character-of-physical-law that covered previously observed equations, and that he could crank to predict the next equation that would be observed.
It is true that nobody knows where the laws of physics come from, but Einstein’s success with General Relativity shows that their common character is strong enough to predict the correct form of one law from having observed other laws, without necessarily needing to observe the precise effects of the law.
So, from a perspective of scientific method, what Einstein did is still induction from evide
Sample Solution
A comfort contract can be created to ensure that patients and their surrogates understand the expected level of post-surgical overall comfort, chronic discomforts, and interventions they may need. The contract should include information about potential side effects or complications of surgery such as pain management techniques to minimize discomfort, ways to decrease anxiety levels related to recovery, or any other aspects of care that could affect a patient’s well being. Additionally, it should provide an overview of the responsibilities that fall on both healthcare providers and patients when it comes to managing post-surgery care; this includes tasks such as following discharge instructions closely (e.g., taking prescribed medications), attending follow up visits with medical professionals if necessary, and utilizing home remedies for relief from chronic discomforts. The purpose is to create an explicit agreement between caregivers and patients so expectations are clear before going into surgery in order for optimal results after recovery.