Medical education
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Mental workload is a concept used in many industries to investigate operator performance, but it has only recently been used in the educational setting. It has been suggested that excessive mental workload in assessors may impair the validity of objective structured clinical examination (OSCE)-type assessments. ⋯ These data suggest that mental workload is excessive in OSCE examiners. Further studies are required to measure the effect of changes in assessment design and examiner training.
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Case Reports
Progressive collaborative refinement on teams: implications for communication practices.
Medical teaching teams (MTTs) must balance teaching and patient care in the face of three challenges: shifting team membership, varying levels of learners and patient complexity. To support care, MTTs rely on a combination of recurrent oral and written communication practices (genres), such as admission, progress and discharge notes. The purpose of this study was to explore how these genres influence the team's ability to collectively care for patients. ⋯ Progressive collaborative refinement was used by MTTs to provide the optimal care to patients. Progressive collaborative refinement was impeded by a lack of continuity of care providers and gaps between communication genres that fragmented conceptualisation and documentation. Progressive collaborative refinement can be understood as both an overarching process and a shared but unstated ideal. Through defining and describing PCR, the present findings can be used to improve communication and teaching.