Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study Clinical Trial
Comparing fourth-year medical students with faculty in the teaching of physical examination skills to first-year students.
To see whether fourth-year medical students can teach the physical examination to first-year students as effectively as can faculty preceptors. ⋯ A select group of fourth-year medical students provides a successful alternative to faculty in the teaching of the physical examination to first-year students.
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Comparative Study
Comparison of the levels of quality of inpatient care delivered by pediatrics residents and by private, community pediatricians at one hospital.
To compare the quality and cost of inpatient care provided by pediatrics residents with the quality and cost of that provided by private, practicing pediatricians. ⋯ Common perceptions that physicians-in-training (1) overuse medical services and (2) fail, due to their inexperience, to provide high-quality services were not supported in this study.
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To evaluate the relationships between both internal and external career-motivating factors and academic productivity (as measured by the total numbers of publications) among full-time medical faculty, and whether these relationships differ for men and women. ⋯ The women faculty published less than did their men colleagues, but this difference cannot be accounted for by gender differences in career motivation. Further research on institutional support, family obligations, harassment, and other factors that could affect academic productivity is necessary to understand the gender difference in numbers of publications.
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To measure the agreement among faculty members about the importance of items on a checklist used to grade an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) station. ⋯ The results strongly suggest that when a group of faculty members cooperatively identifies the important items to be included in an OSCE checklist, the reliability of the checklist is superior to one created by a single author.
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The authors present recent data on changes under way in and the current status of faculty appointment and tenure policies in U. S. medical schools. The data are drawn from a survey conducted by the Association of American Medical Colleges in 1997, to which deans at all 125 U. ⋯ Nearly three fourths of the medical schools in the United States now have a separate and distinct faculty track for full-time clinical faculty whose primary responsibilities are in patient care and teaching. The vast majority of these tracks do not permit faculty to be tenured, but 71% require evidence of scholarship for promotion. The authors conclude that faculty personnel policies in medical schools are likely to continue to evolve, consistent with a growing insinuation of the corporate culture into academia.