Medical education
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Faculty members often use global rating scales as a method of assessing various characteristics of medical students' clinical performance. The purpose of this study was to determine if some performance characteristics are more highly associated with the overall faculty grade than others. ⋯ The rating on any single characteristic predicts a student's overall grade very accurately. Additional measures do not greatly increase the accuracy of prediction. Our results suggest that faculty make a relatively undifferentiated judgement in assigning student grades, and there is little to be gained by using multi-item forms in assessing medical students' clinical performance.
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Multicenter Study
The effects of examination stress on the performance of emergency medicine residents.
Despite the finding that residents are exposed to significant stressors during their training, little is known about the impact of these stressors on performance. The objectives of this project were to measure the subjective anxiety felt by emergency medicine (EM) residents during in-training examinations, and to determine the effect of this anxiety on their ability to diagnose visual stimuli such as X-rays, photographs and electrocardiographs. ⋯ Emergency medicine residents report higher anxiety during in-training examinations compared with control conditions. Residents at all levels exhibited similar perceptions of anxiety. Junior residents performed better under stress, achieving higher scores during the in-training examination than during the control condition. The performance of more experienced residents was not affected by the stress condition.
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Many medical courses use standards-based assessment, usually reported by a restricted range of categories, but there is little evidence of its educational impact. This study aimed to evaluate the impact on medical student learning of changing to standards-based assessments reported by distinction, pass or fail. ⋯ The changes were associated with beneficial effects on deep motive, deep strategy, professional identify and intrinsically motivated study. There were no changes in competitiveness and minimal changes in amount of time spent studying.
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Junior medical students' notions of a 'good doctor' and related expectations: a mixed methods study.
To explore junior medical students' notions of a 'good doctor', given their ideas about: success in Year 1, house jobs, and their attraction to medicine. ⋯ This research provided empirical evidence to support ongoing commentary about patients mostly seeking qualities related to communication, caring, and competence in doctors. Weak evidence that socio-economic status might affect notions of a good doctor is worth pursuing.
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To determine whether doctors in their first year after qualification wanted career advice, and, if so, whether they thought they had been able to obtain useful advice, and whether older doctors thought that adequate career advice had been available to them. ⋯ The great majority of junior doctors want career advice after qualification. It cannot be assumed that they are able to seek it out for themselves satisfactorily. Career advice needs to be planned into postgraduate work and training.