The Medical journal of Australia
-
To evaluate whether the four criteria used by the University of Notre Dame Australia (UNDA) to select medical students are successful in selecting for graduates with the desired outcomes of academic excellence and Catholic "mission fit". ⋯ None of the four selection tools used were significantly associated with medical students who had a positive attitude towards serving underserved communities.
-
From 1967, the Australian Human Pituitary Hormone Program offered treatment for short stature and infertility using human cadaver-acquired pituitary hormones (human growth hormone [hGH] and human pituitary gonadotrophin [hPG]). The program was suspended in 1985 when a growth-hormone recipient in the United States developed Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), an incurable and rapidly progressive neurodegenerative disorder. Since this time, recipients have lived with the significant anxiety that they have an elevated risk of developing CJD. ⋯ Our evaluation indicates that pituitary hormone recipients in Australia have the lowest risk of developing iatrogenic CJD, and that Australia is the only country not to have experienced ongoing CJD-related deaths. Thus, we believe that: in the Australian hGH recipient cohort, the risk of developing CJD is sufficiently low for this cohort to no longer require additional infection control measures in the health care setting; and in the Australian hPG recipient cohort, if another 5 years elapses with no further occurrence of CJD in this group, the hPG recipient cohort could also be considered as not requiring additional infection control measures in the health care setting. These recommendations should not be misunderstood as implying that there is no ongoing risk, but that the risk is acceptably low and generally in keeping with guidelines that stratify the risk.
-
To describe the diagnostic pathways experienced by a large, representative group of Australian women with ovarian cancer, and to document the time between first presentation to a medical professional and clinical diagnosis. ⋯ Despite anecdotal suggestions to the contrary, most women with ovarian cancer in Australia are investigated and diagnosed promptly. The diagnostic process is more protracted for a minority of women, and the factors we found to be associated with diagnostic delay warrant further investigation.
-
To assess the attitudes of health care professionals engaged in open disclosure (OD) to the legal risks and protections that surround this activity. ⋯ Concerns about both the medicolegal implications of OD and the skills needed to conduct it effectively are prevalent among health professionals at the leading edge of the OD movement in Australia. The ability of current laws to protect against use of this information in legal proceedings is perceived as inadequate.
-
To investigate whether interviewer personality, sex or being of the same sex as the interviewee, and training account for variance between interviewers' ratings in a medical student selection interview. ⋯ This study indicates that rating leniency is associated with personality and sex of interviewers, but the effect is small. Random allocation of interviewers, similar proportions of male and female interviewers across applicant interview groups, use of the MMI format, and skills-based interviewer training are all likely to reduce the effect of variance between interviewers.