BMC medical education
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BMC medical education · Oct 2018
Supporting aboriginal and Torres Strait islander cultural educators and cultural mentors in Australian general practice education.
Promoting cultural competence of health professionals working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities is key to improving health outcomes. Cultural Educators and Cultural Mentors (CE/ CMs) have critical roles in Australian general practice training, yet these are not well understood. ⋯ Our research highlights the importance of the unique CE/CM roles and describes challenges in sustaining them. Professional and organisational support is needed to ensure delivery of respectful and effective cultural education within general practitioner training.
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BMC medical education · Oct 2018
The clinician-scientist track: an approach addressing Australia's need for a pathway to train its future clinical academic workforce.
Clinician-scientist training represents the epitome of preparation for biomedical scientific discovery. The significance of, and need for, clinician-scientists is universally recognised as essential to progress medical research across what is regarded as the 'translational gap'. Despite a rich history of cutting-edge biomedical research, Australia has no infrastructure or career pathway for training clinician-scientists. ⋯ Many challenges remain for the future of the program. These challenges are underpinned by a culture that values clinician-scientists as crucial to ensuring that high quality health and medical research is undertaken and translated to patient care, but lags behind in establishing an infrastructure to develop and maintain a new generation of this vital workforce. A future challenge is to develop a coordinated approach to a supported Australian MD-PhD pathway for our most talented and committed students beginning in the undergraduate Bachelor's degree into the medical degree and throughout specialty training. Shared responsibility is necessary between institutions and stakeholders to support and nurture newly trained MD-PhDs into the post-graduate years. Flexibility across this medical training continuum that allows integration of both degrees will help ensure students make the most meaningful connections between the research and the medicine. What is paramount will be acknowledging the career expectations of an emerging cohort of medical students, in particular females, wishing to pursue research. Without these considerations we risk losing our next generation of potential clinician-scientists.
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BMC medical education · Oct 2018
Pain neurophysiology knowledge among physical therapy students in Saudi Arabia: a cross-sectional study.
Pain is a leading cause of disability and accounts for many hospital and physical therapy visits. Current pain science understanding has evolved and changed substantially in the past 20 years; however, university health science curricula may not have progressed at the same rate. This study aimed to examine knowledge about pain neurophysiology among physical therapy students in Saudi Arabia, and to compare their knowledge across different education levels and by gender. ⋯ While final year physical therapy students showed higher levels of pain science knowledge than those at the beginning of their course, the magnitude of the difference was small and likely of little meaningful relevance. This may reflect the need for more emphasis on pain science in the physical therapy curriculum in Saudi Arabia.