Survey of ophthalmology
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Survey of ophthalmology · May 2007
ReviewTeaching and assessing professionalism in ophthalmology residency training programs.
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has mandated that all residency training programs teach and assess new competencies including professionalism. This article reviews the literature on medical professionalism, describes good practices gleaned from published works, and proposes an implementation matrix of specific tools for teaching and assessing professionalism in ophthalmology residency. ⋯ Teaching, role modeling, and assessing the competency of professionalism are important tasks in managing the ACGME mandate. Future work should focus on the field testing of tools for validity, reliability, feasibility, and cost-effectiveness.
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Survey of ophthalmology · May 2007
ReviewIs significant relevant? Validity and patient benefit of randomized controlled clinical trials on age-related macular degeneration.
A large variety of new treatment options for different forms of age-related macular degeneration (ARMD) are becoming available. Not all new therapies may meet the expectations of patients and ophthalmologists. Despite the given statistical significant priority of treatment investigations, the endpoints may not be relevant to the patient's requirements. ⋯ The randomized controlled trial is regarded as the "gold standard" in terms of evaluating the effectiveness of interventions. The external validity of randomized controlled trials may be compromised, if, for example, patients assigned to the study group are unrepresentative of the reference population. This review aims to analyze problems with external validity in the randomized controlled trials on ARMD and surveys the endpoints of clinical studies with respect to the patient benefit.