Medical education
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This investigation aimed to explore the measurement properties of scores from a patient simulator exercise. ⋯ Reliable and valid measures of clinical performance can be obtained from a trauma simulation provided that care is taken in the development and scoring of the scenario.
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To survey medical students' views about the purposes and fairness of assessment procedures. ⋯ Whilst students' views about the fairness of specific assessment tools may sometimes be at variance with published research on assessment, their perceptions will influence the acceptability of assessment. Students would welcome the introduction of methods that provide meaningful assessment feedback.
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Many initiatives are taken to improve prescribing decisions. Educational strategies for doctors have been effective in at least 50% of cases. Some reflection on one's own performance seems to be a common feature of the most effective strategies. So far, such reflections have mainly focused on the observed outcomes of the doctors' decisions, i.e. on what doctors do in practice. Studies in other fields have shown that another form of feedback based on the analysis of judgements may be useful as well. ⋯ Clinical judgement analysis gives doctors a structured reflection on the decision-making policy, and can help them to improve their future decisions. It may be especially useful for groups of doctors who try to work towards a consensus policy. The approach is not very helpful when simple decision rules are appropriate.
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Inter-professional health care teams represent the nucleus of both patient care and the clinical education of novices. Both activities depend upon the'talk' that team members use to interact with one another. This study explored team members' interpretations of tense team communications in the operating room (OR). ⋯ Team members, particularly novices, tend to simplify and distort others' roles and motivations as they interpret tense communication. We suggest that such simplifications may be rhetorical, reflecting professional rivalries on the OR team. In addition, we theorise that novices' echoing of role simplification has implications for their professional identity formation.
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The study's first aim was to assess the emotional impact of cadaver dissection on first year medical students using the newly developed Appraisal of Life Events Scale (ALE). Its secondary aim was to evaluate the validity of the ALE by comparing it with the Impact of Events Scale (IOE). ⋯ The results indicate that medical students do not report their first exposure to cadaver dissection as an aversive experience. Instead, as the ALE results confirm, they found it to be a positive and challenging life event. The ALE appears to be a useful instrument in assessing positive and negative emotional reactions to significant life events.