Advances in health sciences education : theory and practice
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Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract · May 2012
Why simulation-based team training has not been used effectively and what can be done about it.
Advanced medical education simulators are broadly used today to train both technical/procedural and team-based skills. While there is convincing evidence of the benefits of training technical skills, this is not the case for team-based skills. ⋯ The new regime includes first the understanding of complex systems such as the hospital and the operating room; then the performance of work-place assessment; thirdly, the deliberate training of weaknesses and team performance skills; and lastly the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of team competence. A new regime of deliberate training proposed by the author, which would need to be evaluated and validated, could elucidate the underlying mechanisms of team competence while providing evidence of the effect of simulation-based team training.
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Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract · May 2012
Research faculty development: an historical perspective and ideas for a successful future.
What does it take to be successful as a tenure-track research faculty member in a School of Medicine? What are the elements necessary to run a successful laboratory? How does one find the resources and help to know what is important for promotion and tenure? Most training in graduate school or in clinical fellowships does not answer these questions. Too often, new junior tenure-track research faculty members are left to learn from the "school of hard knocks" and essentially are reinventing the wheel, which is a huge waste of time. This article describes the history of research faculty, what makes them successful, and offers suggestions on how we can help them reach their greatest potential.
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Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract · Mar 2012
The impact of selected contextual factors on experts' clinical reasoning performance (does context impact clinical reasoning performance in experts?).
Context specificity, or the variation in a participant's performance from one case, or situation, to the next, is a recognized problem in medical education. However, studies have not explored the potential reasons for context specificity in experts using the lens of situated cognition and cognitive load theories (CLT). Using these theories, we explored the influence of selected contextual factors on clinical reasoning performance in internal medicine experts. ⋯ Contextual factors appear to impact expert physician performance. The impact observed is consistent with situated cognition and CLT's predictions. These findings have potential implications for educational theory and clinical practice.
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Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract · Dec 2011
Participation and progression: new medical graduates entering professional practice.
The first year of practice after medical school is considered to be an essential part of becoming a medical practitioner in Australia. Previous qualitative investigations have investigated a number of significant aspects of this early stage of professional development. ⋯ Grounded theory techniques were used to develop three key themes: internship-as-participation, internship-as-progression, and conflicts, parallels, disturbances and outliers. Key findings were: the important balance between support from colleagues and development through taking independent responsibility; and the strength of the view of internship as part of a 'natural progression', an inevitable evolution through the stages of medical training.
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Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract · Dec 2011
Validation of a self-efficacy instrument and its relationship to performance of crisis resource management skills.
Self-efficacy is thought to be important for resuscitation proficiency in that it influences the development of and access to the associated medical knowledge, procedural skills and crisis resource management (CRM) skills. Since performance assessment of CRM skills is challenging, self-efficacy is often used as a measure of competence in this area. While self-efficacy may influence performance, the true relationship between self-efficacy and performance in this setting has not been delineated. ⋯ We also examined the correlation between self-efficacy and performance scores for a subset of 30 residents who led video recorded simulated resuscitations and had their performances rated by three observers. We found a significant, positive correlation between residents' self-efficacy in situation awareness and environment management and their overall performance of CRM skills. Our findings suggest that in a specific context, self-efficacy as a form of self-assessment may be informative with regards to performance.