Contagious Itch, Disgust and Empathy in Patients and Medical Staff

University Hospital Basel

Status

Completed

Conditions

Contagious Itch

Treatments

Other: Saarbrucken Personality questionnaire (SPQ) addressing empathy.

Other: 7-items-questionnaires addressing CI, disgust and empathy

Other: ItchyQol-questionnaire composed of 22 items addressing itch-related symptoms, functions and emotions

Other: 10-items-questionnaire addressing previous dermatological conditions, intensity of itch

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT04557644

sp20Mueller 2020-01089;

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study is to assess the relationship between CI, disgust and empathy in medical staff treating patients with scabies, to differentiate the impact of visual and verbal stimuli contributing to CI and to assess information about CI, disgust and empathy in a family infested with scabies.

Full description

Itch is the commonest skin-related symptom, defined as a bodily sensation provoking the urge to scratch. The induction of itch and scratching by mere (audio-) visual stimuli such as pictures of insects on skin or video clips showing individuals scratching themselves, indicates that itch can be perceived in the absence of a pruritogenic somatosensory stimulus. This phenomenon is referred to as "contagious itch" (CI). CI may play a special role in the content of scabies both for the affected patients as well as the treating staff: It is a very common phenomenon that family members who are not infested by scabies themselves experience itch when watching their infested relatives scratching. The same is very frequently expressed by health care professionals being confronted with scabies patients. Two further important factors may be involved in the context of CI: disgust and empathy. Empathy is defined as a psychological concept that enables individuals to understand and share emotions of others. Disgust is an emotional response of revulsion to potentially contagious and/or harmful objects or subjects. This study is to assess the relationship between CI, disgust and empathy in medical staff treating patients with scabies, to differentiate the impact of visual and verbal stimuli contributing to CI and to assess information about CI, disgust and empathy in a family infested with scabies.

Enrollment

24 patients

Sex

All

Ages

7+ years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

members of families (aged >7 years) hospitalized in the Department of Dermatology with scabies
staff (physicians, nurses, nurse aids aged >16 years) involved in the treatment of these families
Infestation of scabies in individual family members confirmed by two leading dermatologists of the University Hospital Basel by dermoscopy and/or skin scrapings.

Exclusion criteria