Family medicine
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Critical thinking (CT) skills are an important aspect of clinical reasoning and diagnosis. The goals of this study were to (1) examine levels of CT skills of practicing family physicians, (2) compare the CT skills of practicing family physicians to family medicine residents, and (3) identify individual variables and practice characteristics predictive of CT skills. . ⋯ As a group, practicing family physicians exhibited lower scores on the CCTST compared to family medicine residents. CT skills showed a decline with age, accelerating after approximately age 60 years. The results of the study have implications for continuing education and assessment of physicians' clinical skills. Further research is required to better understand what other predictors may be important for CT skills of practicing family physicians.
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In its landmark report, Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, the Institute of Medicine concluded that unconscious or implicit negative racial attitudes and stereotypes contribute to poorer health outcomes for patients of color. We describe and report on the outcome of teaching a workshop on the tool of racial affinity caucusing to address these issues. ⋯ This study demonstrated the first exploration in medical education of racial affinity caucusing and illustrated that it can be easily implemented in residency programs as an effort to address racial health inequities. Though the participating educators were mostly unfamiliar with it, the workshop was an effective introduction to this tool and by the end, educators reported increased comfort and enthusiasm for racial affinity caucusing, regardless of their preexisting levels of knowledge of or comfort with the tool. In addition, the overwhelming majority of the participants felt they could implement it at their respective institutions.
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The majority of medical students receive some of their training with a community preceptor. Nearly all of these preceptors are motivated by a desire to give back to their profession through teaching and they want to learn how to teach more effectively. Designing effective educational programs to improve preceptor teaching is important to upholding the quality of medical education. ⋯ Our preceptor-improvement intervention led to demonstrable improvement in preceptor teaching, as measured by preceptor evaluation and evaluation by the standardized student. More research is needed to see if these results can be replicated and, in particular, to determine which aspects of the intervention were most useful.