Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges
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To determine the accuracy of admission committee members' predictions regarding which applicants are likely to become generalists, and to determine which applicant characteristics are used and should be used in making these predictions. ⋯ Admission committee members often made inaccurate predictions about applicants' career plans. This may be because they based their judgments on applicants' characteristics that were not significantly related to the students' career plans at graduation.
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Although the communication that occurs within health care teams is important to both team function and the socialization of novices, the nature of team communication and its educational influence are not well documented. This study explored the nature of communications among operating room (OR) team members from surgery, nursing, and anesthesia to identify common communicative patterns, sites of tension, and their impact on novices. ⋯ Team communications in the OR follow observable patterns and are influenced by recurrent themes that suggest sites of team tension. Tension in team communication affects novices, who respond with behaviors that may intensify rather than resolve interprofessional conflict.
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To examine academic rankings and educational backgrounds of underrepresented minority (URM) family medicine faculty and compare their academic ranks with national trends. The authors also determined the extent to which international and historically black educational institutions contributed URM faculty to family medicine. ⋯ URM family medicine faculty appear to experience a double disadvantage: being minority and working for family medicine departments. Their academic ranks remain far below those of both minority medical school faculty and family medicine faculty, a discouraging finding considering the current shortage of URM faculty in family medicine departments. Historically black medical schools cannot address the shortage alone, so non-historically-black medical schools need to both recruit URM faculty and follow up with appropriate mentoring of those faculty.
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To design and evaluate an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) station on dictating a consult letter as part of a formative OSCE for internal medicine residents. ⋯ An OSCE station is a feasible way to examine written communication skills. Letter-writing skills appear to be distinct from knowledge (physical exam station), but somewhat linked to verbal communication skills.