Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges
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To evaluate interns' perceived preparedness for defined surgical residency responsibilities and to determine whether fourth-year medical school (M4) preparatory courses ("bootcamps") facilitate transition to internship. ⋯ Entering surgical residency, interns report not feeling prepared to fulfill common clinical and professional responsibilities. As M4 curricula may enhance preparation, programs facilitating transition to residency should be developed and evaluated.
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Medical caregivers are always telling stories because stories provide meaning to much of their working lives. Although there is surely an element of shock value in the stories that medical professionals choose to share, the compulsion to tell a story is largely motivated by the profound emotions kindled by the clinical experience. This impulse needs to be recognized by the profession, even nurtured. ⋯ Any story that might be damaging, hurtful, or embarrassing to a patient does not belong in the public sphere. Nevertheless, those in medicine need to recognize that the impulse to tell a story is innate in the human race, especially so in the caregiving professions. Experienced caregivers need to help students understand that stories provide depth and meaning to medicine but, when broadcast inappropriately, can cause harm.
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There is a recognized need to translate scientific discoveries to patient-oriented clinical research (POCR). Several obstacles interfere with the successful recruitment and retention of physicians for POCR careers. ⋯ Because mentorship is key to developing a successful career, the CRTI program is being modified to enhance longitudinal mentorship by CRTI faculty mentors and mentors at trainees' home institutions, as well as to encourage the establishment of collaborations and the potential for research project success. Efforts to make the CRTI experience available to more phy sicians, include more CRTI graduates as faculty, and increase participation by hematologists from backgrounds under represented in medicine are under way.
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To identify and examine the characteristics of the 50 top-cited articles in medical education. ⋯ The finding that over half of List B articles were published in nonmedical education journals is consistent with medical education's integrated nature and subspecialty breadth. Twenty of these articles were among their respective non-medical-education journals' 50 top-cited papers, showing that medical education articles can compete with subject-based articles.
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Use of social networking programs like Facebook and Twitter, which enable the public sharing of diverse content over the Internet, has risen dramatically in recent years. Although health professionals have faced consequences for clearly unethical online behavior, a relatively unexamined practice among medical students is the disclosure of patient care stories on social media in a manner that is technically compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, yet is ethically questionable. ⋯ Consequences include the possibility of undermining public trust in the profession, inadvertently identifying patients, and violating expectations of privacy. The authors recommend that medical schools explicitly address these issues across the preclinical and clinical curricula and emphasize that patient-related postings on social media may carry inherent risks both to patients and to the profession.