BMC medical education
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BMC medical education · Jan 2013
Medical undergraduates' use of behaviour change talk: the example of facilitating weight management.
Obesity, an increasing problem worldwide, is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. Management principally requires lifestyle (i.e. behavioural) changes. An evidence-base exists of behaviour change techniques for weight loss; however, in routine practice doctors are often unsure about effective treatments and commonly use theoretically-unfounded communication strategies (e.g. information-giving). It is not known if communication skills teaching during undergraduate training adequately prepares future doctors to engage in effective behaviour change talk with patients. The aim of the study was to examine which behaviour change techniques medical undergraduates use to facilitate lifestyle adjustments in obese patients. ⋯ Current skills-based communication programmes do not adequately prepare future doctors for the growing task of facilitating weight management. Students are able to generalise some communication skills to these encounters, but are over confident and have limited ability to use evidence-based theoretically informed techniques. They recognise this as a learning need. Educators will need to tackle the challenges of integrating theoretically informed and evidence based behaviour change talk within medical training.
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BMC medical education · Jan 2013
Same admissions tools, different outcomes: a critical perspective on predictive validity in three undergraduate medical schools.
Admission to medical school is one of the most highly competitive entry points in higher education. Considerable investment is made by universities to develop selection processes that aim to identify the most appropriate candidates for their medical programs. This paper explores data from three undergraduate medical schools to offer a critical perspective of predictive validity in medical admissions. ⋯ The findings suggest the strength of multiple admissions tools in predicting outcomes of medical students. However, they also highlight the large differences in outcomes achieved by different schools, thus emphasising the pitfalls of generalising results from predictive validity studies without recognising the diverse ways in which they are designed and the variation in the institutional contexts in which they are administered. The assumption that high-positive correlations are desirable (or even expected) in these studies is also problematised.
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Graduating Internal Medicine residents must possess sufficient skills to perform a variety of medical procedures. Little is known about resident experiences of acquiring procedural skills proficiency, of practicing these techniques, or of being assessed on their proficiency. The purpose of this study was to qualitatively investigate resident 1) experiences of the acquisition of procedural skills and 2) perceptions of procedural skills assessment methods available to them. ⋯ The acquisition and assessment of procedural skills in Internal Medicine programs should move toward a more structured system of teaching, deliberate practice and objective assessment. We propose that directed, self-guided learning might meet these needs.