Journal of general internal medicine
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Comparative Study
The role of medical education in reducing health care disparities: the first ten years of the UCLA/Drew Medical Education Program.
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)/Charles R. Drew University Medical Education Program was developed to train physicians for practice in underserved areas. The UCLA/Drew Medical Education Program students receive basic science instruction at UCLA and complete their required clinical rotations in South Los Angeles, an impoverished urban community. We have previously shown that, in comparison to their UCLA counterparts, students in the Drew program had greater odds of maintaining their commitment to medically disadvantaged populations over the course of medical education. ⋯ Physicians who graduated from the UCLA/Drew Medical Education Program have higher odds of practicing in underserved areas than those who completed the traditional UCLA curriculum, even after controlling for other factors such as race/ethnicity. The association between participation in the UCLA/Drew Medical Education Program and physician practice location suggests that medical education programs may reinforce student goals to practice in disadvantaged communities.
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Comparative Study
A ten-month program in curriculum development for medical educators: 16 years of experience.
Despite increased demand for new curricula in medical education, most academic medical centers have few faculty with training in curriculum development. ⋯ This model for training in curriculum development has long-term sustainability and is associated with participant satisfaction, improvement in self-rated skills, and implementation of curricula on important topics.
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Comparative Study
Comparison of hospital costs and length of stay for community internists, hospitalists, and academicians.
The model of inpatient medical management has evolved toward Hospitalists because of greater cost efficiency compared to traditional practice. The optimal model of inpatient care is not known. ⋯ Academic teams compare favorably to private Hospitalists and traditional Internists for hospital cost efficiency and quality.
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Organizational leaders and scholars have issued calls for the medical profession to refocus its efforts on fulfilling the core tenets of professionalism. A key element of professionalism is participation in community affairs. ⋯ Physicians have lower adjusted voting rates than lawyers and the general population, suggesting reduced civic participation.
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Respect is frequently invoked as an integral aspect of ethics and professionalism in medicine, yet it is often unclear what respect means in this setting. While we recognize that there are many reasonable ways to think about and use the term 'respect', in this paper, we develop a conception of respect that imposes a distinct moral duty on physicians. We are concerned mainly with the idea of respect for persons, or more specifically, respect for patients as persons. ⋯ Such respect involves respecting the autonomy of patients, but we challenge the idea that respect for autonomy is a complete or self-sufficient expression of respect for persons. Furthermore, we suggest that the type of respect that physicians owe to patients is independent of a patient's personal characteristics, and therefore, ought to be accorded equally to all. Finally, the respect that we promote has both a cognitive dimension (believing that patients have value) and a behavioral dimension (acting in accordance with this belief).