BMC medical education
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BMC medical education · Jan 2005
Design and validation of the Health Professionals' Attitudes Toward the Homeless Inventory (HPATHI).
Recent literature has called for humanistic care of patients and for medical schools to begin incorporating humanism into medical education. To assess the attitudes of health-care professionals toward homeless patients and to demonstrate how those attitudes might impact optimal care, we developed and validated a new survey instrument, the Health Professional Attitudes Toward the Homeless Inventory (HPATHI). An instrument that measures providers' attitudes toward the homeless could offer meaningful information for the design and implementation of educational activities that foster more compassionate homeless health care. Our intention was to describe the process of designing and validating the new instrument and to discuss the usefulness of the instrument for assessing the impact of educational experiences that involve working directly with the homeless on the attitudes, interest, and confidence of medical students and other health-care professionals. ⋯ The HPATHI demonstrated strong reliability for the total scale and satisfactory test-retest reliability. Extreme group comparisons suggested that experience with the homeless rather than medical training itself could affect health-care professionals' attitudes toward the homeless. This could have implications for the evaluation of medical school curricula.
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BMC medical education · Jan 2005
Comparative StudyMistreatment of university students most common during medical studies.
This study concerns the occurrence of various forms of mistreatment by staff and fellow students experienced by students in the Faculty of Medicine and the other four faculties of the University of Oulu, Finland. ⋯ Students in the Faculty of Medicine reported the greatest amount of mistreatment. If a faculty mistreats its students, its success in the main tasks of universities, research, teaching and learning, will be threatened. The results challenge university teachers, especially in faculties of medicine, to evaluate their ability to create a safe environment conducive to learning.
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This study was designed to assess the motivations of senior medical clinicians to teach medical students. This understanding could improve the recruitment and retention of important clinical teachers. ⋯ This study provides some insights into factors that may be utilised in the design of teaching programs that meet teacher motivations and ultimately enhance the effectiveness of the medical teaching workforce.
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BMC medical education · Jan 2005
Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative StudyCardiac auscultation training of medical students: a comparison of electronic sensor-based and acoustic stethoscopes.
To determine whether the use of an electronic, sensor based stethoscope affects the cardiac auscultation skills of undergraduate medical students. ⋯ Whether an electronic or a conventional stethoscope was used during training and testing did not affect the students' performance on a cardiac auscultation test.
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BMC medical education · Jan 2005
Providing education on evidence-based practice improved knowledge but did not change behaviour: a before and after study.
Many health professionals lack the skills to find and appraise published research. This lack of skills and associated knowledge needs to be addressed, and practice habits need to change, for evidence-based practice to occur. The aim of this before and after study was to evaluate the effect of a multifaceted intervention on the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviour of allied health professionals. ⋯ Evidence-based practice skills and knowledge improved markedly with a targetted education intervention and outreach support. However, changes in behaviour were small, based on the frequency of searching and appraisal activities. Allied health educators should focus more on post-workshop skill development, particularly appraisal, and help learners to establish new routines and priorities around evidence-based practice. Learners also need to know that behaviour change of this nature may take months, even years.