Medical education
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We conducted a longitudinal faculty development programme for medical school faculty, focused on enhancing learner-centred teaching skills, by integrating traditional elements of education, focusing on knowledge, skills and attitudes, with the non-traditional process elements of community building, self-awareness and relationship formation. ⋯ It is feasible to successfully convene clinical faculty from different departments in the same faculty development programme with little or no concern for competition and conflict. The key to success is integrating content and process dimensions into a framework of community building and collective engagement. From the participants' perspective, skills and confidence, which by self-report increased for all participants, was less consequential than the opportunity to learn about themselves and their relationships to others in a safe environment. We have conducted this programme for 5 successive years.
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Surveys of medical students are widely used to evaluate course content and faculty teaching within the medical school. Gathering information that accurately reflects student perceptions requires that students buy into the evaluation process and be willing to provide thoughtful responses to the teaching evaluation. To maintain student commitment, it is important that medical students are not overburdened with poorly planned evaluations. Sampling might decrease the number of evaluations required of students and might also reduce the proportion of non-responses and other forms of inattentive response biases. ⋯ Sampling can reduce evaluation demands placed on students, and preserve reliability and increase the validity of mean evaluation scores. With computer presentation, efficient sampling techniques become practical and should be part of software packages used to present teacher evaluations.
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To explore how clinicians perceive their roles in problem-based medical education, and how closely those perceptions link to the curriculum they teach. ⋯ Problem-based method lacked some important conditions for professional teaching and learning. Traditional apprenticeship is unsustainable under present day conditions of practice. There is a need for new educational methods that help the learner to build a professional identity through social interaction with practitioners.
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The literature on how in-training assessment (ITA) works in practice and what educational outcomes can actually be achieved is limited. One of the aims of introducing ITA is to increase trainees' clinical confidence; this relies on the assumption that assessment drives learning through its content, format and programming. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of introducing a structured ITA programme on junior doctors' clinical confidence. The programme was aimed at first year trainees in anaesthesiology. ⋯ This study demonstrates that the introduction of a structured ITA programme did not have any significant effect on trainees' mean level of confidence on a broad range of aspects of clinical competence. The importance of timeliness and rigorousness in the application of ITA is discussed.