Medical education
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Clinical Trial Controlled Clinical Trial
Evaluation of procedural skills training in an undergraduate curriculum.
A substantial proportion of medical students enter their intern year without any basic skills experience. Lack of experience is a significant source of stress for many junior doctors. ⋯ A single session of formalised teaching in procedural skills in the early stages of a medical degree can have long-term effectiveness in basic skills competence and may increase students' confidence to practise their skills.
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Multicenter Study
The relationship between medical students' attitudes towards communication skills learning and their demographic and education-related characteristics.
The General Medical Council (GMC) has stressed the importance of medical students' attitudes towards learning. However, few studies have explored medical students' attitudes towards communication skills learning. This study explores the relationship between the attitudes of medical students at two different schools and their demographic and education-related characteristics. ⋯ The results indicate that medical students' attitudes towards communication skills learning are associated with their demographic and education-related characteristics. These findings have a number of implications for educational practice and further research and these are discussed in this paper.
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To describe and evaluate the effectiveness of a new method of teaching clinical skills designed to increase students' active and self-directed learning as well as tutor feedback. ⋯ The SCAL approach appears to offer some advantages over traditional clinical skills teaching. It appears to encourage active and independent decision-making, and to increase tutor feedback. Further exploration of the approach appears warranted.
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Practice inevitably narrows over time. Therefore, testing of established doctors requires that their assessment be tailored to a far narrower practice than is appropriate for testing of new doctors who have not yet differentiated. ⋯ Testing of established doctors needs to reflect that physicians specialise, often in idiosyncratic ways; otherwise, the testing will not be credible among established doctors and will not reflect the realities of their practice. Despite the importance of these goals, the conceptual and methodological challenges of creating tailored assessments remain daunting.