Medical education
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The Association of American Medical Colleges' Institute for Improving Medical Education's report entitled 'Effective Use of Educational Technology' called on researchers to study the effectiveness of multimedia design principles. These principles were empirically shown to result in superior learning when used with college students in laboratory studies, but have not been studied with undergraduate medical students as participants. ⋯ Multimedia design principles are easy to implement and result in improved short-term retention among medical students, but empirical research is still needed to determine how these principles affect transfer of learning. Further research on applying the principles of multimedia design to medical education is needed to verify the impact it has on the long-term learning of medical students, as well as its impact on other forms of multimedia instructional programmes used in the education of medical students.
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For doctors, curiosity is fundamental to understanding each patient's unique experience of illness, building respectful relationships with patients, deepening self-awareness, supporting clinical reasoning, avoiding premature closure and encouraging lifelong learning. Yet, curiosity has received limited attention in medical education and research, and studies from the fields of cognitive psychology and education suggest that common practices in medical education may inadvertently suppress curiosity. ⋯ Curiosity, inquisitiveness and related habits of mind can be supported in medical education through specific, evidence-based instructional approaches. Medical educators should balance the teaching of facts, techniques and protocols with approaches that help students cultivate and sustain curiosity and wonder in the context-rich, often ambiguous world of clinical medicine.
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Recently, in the U.S.A., the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education guidelines limited residents' consecutive duty to 24 hours. In Europe, the European Working Time Directive limits the average working week to 48 hours. ⋯ The changes in activating and partnering talk that occur in post-call residents are consistent with findings concerning sleep deprivation and speech. Female and male residents tended to attribute their post-call performance to different factors. Setting limits on working hours might help to avoid potential negative impacts on post-call resident feelings, and the impact of working hours on resident performance warrants further exploration.