Journal of medical education
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The reliability of a 13-item questionnaire designed to assess the humanistic behaviors of internal medicine residents and the reliability of nurses as raters of those behaviors were examined. Twenty-five residents were evaluated by 10 or 11 nurses on two general medicine services and on cardiology and hematology-oncology services in a large, highly specialized department of internal medicine. ⋯ The coefficients were .95 and .85 for the two general medicine services, .67 for cardiology, and .88 for hematology-oncology. These findings indicate that the questionnaire is a reliable instrument for assessing humanistic behavior and identifying reliable raters in groups of nurses.
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Concerns over the poor educational standards of some foreign medical schools and the cost of postgraduate education at a time of a projected physician surplus in the United States have led to efforts to pass federal legislation that would limit or remove access of U. S. graduates of foreign medical schools to residency programs in the United States. However, the need for such legislation has been diminished since the appeal of foreign medical education for U. ⋯ In this paper, the author reviews the economic and educational environment that in the mid-1970s led to the growth in the numbers of U. S. students who sought foreign medical education and contrasts it with the environment in the mid-1980s. Recent data are cited that support a reversal of that earlier trend.
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A new format for training medical school faculty members was begun in 1978 when the federal government and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation simultaneously began funding separate faculty development programs for family medicine faculty members. The goals of these two programs were to recruit and prepare new physician faculty members for family medicine educational programs. In the present study, the authors assessed the impact of these programs by a review of grant proposals and a survey of alumni for each program. ⋯ Consequently, the two programs produced participants who went to different academic settings and became involved in quite different activities, especially in the area of scholarly work. However, regardless of the program the participants chose, common factors were found to characterize those who were active in scholarly areas and those who were less active. Based on these findings, recommendations are offered to future planners and funders of faculty development programs for preparing new physician faculty members.
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Lecturers in a medical biochemistry course were evaluated by medical students with respect to overall impression and seven specific characteristics expected to predict overall impression. Each lecturer's ratings were subjected to stepwise multiple regression analysis to identify the characteristics that best accounted for the students' overall impression. ⋯ Half of the lecturers expressed interest in improving their performance, and 20 percent of the lecturers requested specific, detailed guidance in overcoming problems. The author concludes that multivariate analysis of student ratings can generate feedback specific enough to guide teacher improvement but that it is essential to present the information to the faculty in conjunction with individual discussions.
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Comparative Study
Ratings of residents' clinical competence and performance on certification examination.
The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) requires directors of internal medicine residency programs to rate their residents in overall clinical competence and its essential components. In the study reported here, the authors investigated the relationships among these ratings and compared them with the residents' performance on the ABIM's certification examination in the years 1980 through 1985. The ratings of the individual components of clinical competence were correlated moderately with examination performance and very highly with each other. ⋯ Changes in the pattern of the ratings over time indicated that fewer candidates were receiving lower ratings while more were receiving higher ratings. The pass rates for each rating level were the same or lower; for example, the pass rate for candidates rated 5 was 68 percent in 1980 and 56 percent in 1985. The similar ranking of examinees by the program directors and the examination provides evidence for the validity of the examination.