Medical education
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Teaching and evaluating first and second year medical students' practice of evidence-based medicine.
To implement an evidence-based medicine (EBM) curriculum for Year 1 and 2 medical students, and to develop a method to evaluate their practice of EBM in discrete and relevant worksteps. ⋯ Although we have demonstrated preliminary reliability and validity of a new evaluation instrument that assess the domains of scientific knowledge, work habits and reasoning skills required in the practice of EBM, many of the correlations were weak, and we remain in the very early stages of determining if, when and how EBM instruction should occur in medical education.
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A change from traditional to problem-based learning (PBL) methods in a psychiatry attachment was evaluated by comparing the learning styles, attitudes to psychiatry and examination performance of 2 cohorts of students. It was hypothesised that the PBL curriculum would result in increased deep learning, decreased surface learning, more favourable attitudes to psychiatry and improved examination performance. It was predicted that students' examination success would be related to the use of deep and strategic learning and favourable attitudes. ⋯ Examination performance indicated that the PBL curriculum was more successful than the previous course, but that this improvement was not due to students using more effective learning styles or having more favourable attitudes towards psychiatry. It is possible that students learned more effectively during the teaching sessions in the PBL curriculum, but did not change their preferred learning styles.
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This paper reports on consultants' self-assessed changes in their teaching and training practices over an 8-10-month period. It compares the changes between a group undergoing a 3-day teaching course (participants) and a sample group taken from the course waiting list (controls). ⋯ The teaching course is an effective vehicle for increasing consultants' teaching skills.