Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges
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The term academic continuing medical education (CME) is defined and explored from the perspective of forces that have made its usage necessary. These forces include the new understandings of the place, impact, and scope of CME, and, in particular, the increasing entrepreneurial interests in the field, unrelated to the improvement of physicians' competence or performance, or to health care outcomes. In addition to principles of CME provision promulgated by the Accreditation Council of CME, and those of ethical CME providers, academic CME implies the critical appraisal of the providers' activities, the creation of new knowledge about how physicians learn and change, and the dissemination of information based on such knowledge. Finally, the nature of academic CME providers is discussed, and the potential role of CME in fostering the social contract between the medical professional and society is explored.
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A training program in universal precautions was developed and implemented in 1991-92 for second-year students at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. The students were required to participate in a three-hour session that consisted of lecture, demonstration, and practice components focused on the risks of bloodborne-disease exposure and the techniques of phlebotomy and intravenous insertion using universal precautions. ⋯ The training session significantly improved the students' knowledge and sense of their own competency.
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To examine the choices of career paths of women in internal medicine, specifically to determine (1) whether women continue to prefer primary care practice more often than men do and (2) whether differences in career paths between men and women result from differences in the natures of the training programs they complete. ⋯ The women pursued primary-care-oriented internal medicine to a significantly greater degree than did the men, regardless of the type of training program completed (primary care or traditional).
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Comparative Study
Influence of candidates' test selection on pass rates on examinations for certification by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates.
Parts I and II of the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) examination were first offered to graduates of foreign medical schools in 1989 as an alternative to the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination in the Medical Sciences (FMGEMS). This study was designed to determine whether differences in pass rates and scores were related to differences in the populations selecting one or the other examination. ⋯ Some students probably opted to take the NBME in 1989 in the belief that it might be easier than the FMGEMS, resulting in lower pass rates for the NBME. The NBME pass rates rose in 1990 after the differential pass rates had become public.
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This study addressed the questions of whether medical students' cumulative grade-point averages (GPAs) correlate with the performance assessments (overall and in specific areas of competency) that they receive as interns from their internship program directors, and whether the students' self-assessments of preparedness for internship correlate with their internship directors' overall assessments. A questionnaire to assess interns' competencies was developed and sent to the directors of the internship programs of the 283 1990 and 1991 graduates of the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine who consented to participate in the study (82% of the graduates). Eighty percent of the program directors responded. ⋯ The correlations of GPAs with the specific areas of competencies ranged from .28 to .51. The correlation between the mean ratings of the program directors and the mean self-ratings of the interns was .58. The data support the conclusions that medical school academic performance relates significantly to performance in internship and that interns do not rate themselves as highly as their program directors do.