Journal of surgical education
-
Although there is great interest in providing training for surgical residents who are interested in practicing in a rural environment, guidelines for creating a curriculum are nonexistent. ⋯ A suburban, community hospital with academically oriented faculty is a good environment for training residents interested in rural or subspecialty-sparse working environments. Proficiency and credentials in basic subspecialty procedures and care can be achieved during a 1-year fellowship.
-
The amount of financial debt incurred by Texas medical students and residents during training was examined as well as the impact of this debt on these trainees' career choices. ⋯ Medical students and residents incur considerable financial debt, which seems to affect their career choices. Approximately half of the students and one third of the residents surveyed indicated that they would consider participating in a loan repayment program that required practice in an underserved area.
-
Blunt injury to the inferior vena cava (IVC) is a rare event, which occurs in 1% to 10% of blunt-trauma patients. Injuries usually result from deceleration, which causes atriocaval rupture or tearing of the hepatic veins, and are sometimes complicated by uncontrollable hemorrhage. An unusual case of focal extrinsic compression of the vessel caused by retrohepatic hemorrhage is reported, which ultimately has required no operative intervention and seems to have had no long-term ill effects. The literature on blunt injury to the IVC is reviewed, which includes a review of posttraumatic Budd-Chiari syndrome.
-
Comparative Study
Comparison of surgical residency applicants from U.S. medical schools with U.S.-born and foreign-born international medical school graduates.
Compare characteristics of U.S. medical school graduates with U.S.-born and foreign-born international medical school (IMG) graduates. ⋯ IMGs are older, frequently male, hold more advanced degrees, and produce more scholarly works but require multiple attempts to pass the USMLE. IMGs also hold more jobs after graduation with most positions being in research or surgery.
-
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) defines a "handoff" as a contemporaneous, interactive process of passing patient-specific information from one caregiver to another for the purpose of ensuring the continuity and safety of patient care. The purpose of this study was to conduct a comprehensive investigation on the determinants of an effective handoff management system. Specifically, we sought to address the following null hypotheses: There is no difference before and after implementation of a new, low-cost, low-tech process for surgery patient handoffs in accuracy of information, completeness, clarity of exact time of patient transfer, and number of tasks appropriately handed off. ⋯ By simplifying and standardizing the handoff instrument, we demonstrated improvements in resident perceptions of accuracy, completeness, and number of tasks transferred. This low-cost, low-tech paradigm may be useful to others.