Medical education
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Arts subjects are often included in medical school curricula to facilitate the exploration of non-scientific elements of medicine, such as communication, social, political, emotional and spiritual issues. However, little research has reported on students' experience of arts teaching. Performing Medicine is a programme created by the Clod Ensemble theatre company in collaboration with Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, and the Department of Drama at Queen Mary University, London. Professional artists run a range of workshops exploring issues relating to health care and work to develop students' professional skills in self-presentation, observation, communication, self-care and their understanding of difference. This article presents an analysis of student-written material about Performing Medicine. ⋯ Students generally felt that arts teaching made a valuable contribution to the medical curriculum. Many felt the training would reduce 'performance anxiety' in situations such as examinations, presentations and new placements. Group work developed camaraderie and students enjoyed the opportunity to learn new skills through creative writing, theatre and movement sessions. Some sessions developed students' ability to engage with and relate to people from very different backgrounds than their own.
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Effective handover within the health care setting is vital to patient safety. Despite published literature discussing strategies to improve handover, the extent to which educational interventions have been used and how such interventions relate to the published theoretical models of handover remain unclear. These issues were investigated through a systematic review of the literature. ⋯ There is a paucity of research describing educational interventions to improve handover and assessing their effectiveness. The quality of published studies is generally poor. Some evidence exists to demonstrate that skills can be transferred to the workplace, but none was found to demonstrate that interventions improve patient safety.
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The global shortage of doctors is of concern. This is particularly true in French-speaking regions of New Brunswick, Canada, where there is no medical school. Since 1981, francophone medical students from New Brunswick have been able to undertake part of their training in their province through an agreement with medical schools in another province. We studied the effects of frequency and length of exposure to the province of origin during medical training on the likelihood that a doctor will ever or currently practise medicine in that province. ⋯ Greater exposure to New Brunswick during medical training is associated with significantly better odds that doctors will be recruited to and retained in the province. Some effects are perceived for exposure during both undergraduate (most importantly in the final years) and postgraduate programmes.