Medical education
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The 2000 Institute of Medicine report, 'To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System', focused the medical community on medical error. This focus led to educational initiatives and legislation designed to minimise errors and increase their disclosure. ⋯ This comparison of intern responses to a survey administered at either end of the last decade reveals that there may have been some important changes in interns' intended disclosure practices and attitudes toward medical error.
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High-fidelity simulators have enjoyed increasing popularity despite costs that may approach six figures. This is justified on the basis that simulators have been shown to result in large learning gains that may transfer to actual patient care situations. However, most commonly, learning from a simulator is compared with learning in a 'no-intervention' control group. This fails to clarify the relationship between simulator fidelity and learning, and whether comparable gains might be achieved at substantially lower cost. ⋯ The factors influencing learning, and the reasons for this surprising finding, are discussed.
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Feedback in workplace-based clinical settings often relies on expert trainers' judgements of directly observed trainee performance. There is ample literature on effective feedback, but in practice trainees in workplace-based training are not regularly observed. We aimed to examine external conditions that impact feedback in observational workplace-based assessment (WBA). ⋯ In line with the literature, our results emphasise the importance of the content of feedback and the way it is provided, as well as the importance of its incorporation in trainees' learning. Moreover, we highlight the step before the actual feedback itself. The way arrangements for feedback are made appears to be important to feedback in formative WBA. Finally, we outline several factors that influence the success or failure of feedback but precede the process of observation and feedback.