BMC medical education
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BMC medical education · Nov 2016
Perspectives on death and dying: a study of resident comfort with End-of-life care.
Despite the benefits to early palliative care in the treatment of terminal illness, barriers to timely hospice referrals exist. Physicians who are more comfortable having end-of-life (EOL) conversations are more likely to refer to hospice. However, very little is known about what factors influence comfort with EOL care. ⋯ Most residents had inadequate education in EOL conversation skills during medical school and residency. Despite the lack of training, EOL conversations during residency are common and often unsupervised. Those who reported more classroom training during residency on EOL skills had greater comfort with EOL conversations. Training programs should provide palliative care education to all physicians during residency and fellowship, especially for those specialties that are most likely to encounter patients with advanced terminal disease.
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BMC medical education · Nov 2016
A simulation-based curriculum to introduce key teamwork principles to entering medical students.
Failures of teamwork and interpersonal communication have been cited as a major patient safety issue. Although healthcare is increasingly being provided in interdisciplinary teams, medical school curricula have traditionally not explicitly included the specific knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors required to function effectively as part of such teams. ⋯ This curriculum could be valuable to other medical schools seeking to inculcate teamwork foundations in their medical school's preclinical curricula. Moreover, this curriculum can be used to facilitate teamwork principles important to inter-disciplinary, as well as uni-disciplinary, collaboration.
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BMC medical education · Nov 2016
The quality of feedback during formative OSCEs depends on the tutors' profile.
During their pre-clinical years, medical students are given the opportunity to practice clinical skills with simulated patients. During these formative objective structured clinical encounters (OSCEs), tutors from various backgrounds give feedback on students' history taking, physical exam, and communication skills. The aim of the study was to evaluate whether the content and process of feedback varied according to the tutors' profile. ⋯ These findings suggest that generalist tutors are more learner-centered and pay more attention to communication and professionalism during feedback than specialist tutors. Such differences may be explained by differences in feedback training but also by differences in practice styles and frames of references that should be further explored.
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Performance on visiting rotations during the senior year of medical school is consistently cited by residency program directors as a critical factor in selecting residents. Nevertheless, the frequency with which visiting rotations are undertaken and the associated financial costs they impose have not been systematically examined. ⋯ Visiting rotations are prevalent, expensive, and only partly educational. As such, these rotations may impede optimal use of the senior year of medical school and limited student financial resources.
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BMC medical education · Nov 2016
Your professionalism is not my professionalism: congruence and variance in the views of medical students and faculty about professionalism.
Medical professionalism is an essential aspect of medical education and practice worldwide and it must be adopted according to different social and cultural contexts. We examined the current congruence and variance in the perception of professionalism in undergraduate medical students and faculty members in one medical school in Saudi Arabia. ⋯ These results raised concerns in relation to the students' understanding of professionalism. It is therefore, important to enhance their learning around the attributes of medical professionalism.