Primary care settings are optimal environments for providing comprehensive, family-centered care to young children and their families. Primary care clinics with integrated behavioral health clinicians (BHCs) are well-positioned to build trust and create access to care for marginalized and underserved populations. Refugees from around the world are…

Health literacy, the ability to obtain and understand information and services to make good health decisions, has received much attention recently. Literacy is a stronger predictor of health status than age, income, race, ethnicity, employment status, or educational level. Inadequate health literacy costs the United States an estimated $100-$236…

This paper describes how a group of five older adults with Down's syndrome decided what they wanted from their doctor. The group worked out what they meant by health. The group also looked at what it was OK for a doctor to ask or do. They made lists of these. The group decided that being healthy means being able to do things. Feelings, of being…

The Canadian government supports the transformation of education for health care providers based on the recognized need for an inter-professional collaborative approach to care. This first paper in a series of papers demonstrates the credibility of an action research approach for the promotion and understanding of inter-professional education…

A program developed at the University of Arizona College of Medicine that used patient instructors to evaluate interviewing skills of medical students is described. Patient instructors are nonphysicians who are taught to function in the roles of patient, teacher, and evaluator. (Author/MLW)

A program using patient instructors programmed with a history of hypertension, chronic pulmonary disease, or congestive heart failure to teach and evaluate pharmacy students' interviewing skills is described. Content areas included drug therapy, adverse reactions, drug interactions, etc. (Author/MSE)

Explores centrality of the mourning process in the education of developing health care professionals who are the survivors of complex and manifold losses, in an elective seminar for senior medical students and graduate nurses. (Author)

Describes a training program developed and operated by parent educators at the Children's Health Council that is designed to help pediatric resident medical students at Stanford University in their efforts to understand parents better and give them useful advice on common child rearing questions. (BB)

A coronary heart disease risk factor self-change project for first-year medical students at Brown University is described. Students were exposed to behavioral principles and were able to observe firsthand the biological integration of behavior and physiology. (MLW)

The Pediatrics Residency Program of the Mt. Sinai Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio, instituted a microcomputer-assisted information management system that provides the means for documenting the resident's patient contacts and learning experiences. Its role in meeting requirements of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education in…

The curriculum design, philosophy, and innovation of four programs in geriatric optometry are described: the Pennsylvania College of Optometry and the colleges of Optometry at the State University of New York, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and University of Houston. (MSE)

The need for teaching doctors how to counsel and impart coping skills techniques to their patients is discussed. The cognitive-experiential underpinnings of a course in medical counseling given to last preclinical-year medical students in the University of Queensland is outlined. (MLW)

In 1980, the State University of New York at Stony Brook began a program, integrated into the program of children's dentistry, to train students in care for the developmentally disabled. Management of developmentally disabled patients is provided over three years, and represents an extension of pediatric behavior management. (MSE)

Understanding the relevance of basic science knowledge in the determination of patient assessment, diagnosis, and treatment is critical to good medical practice. One method often used to direct students in the fundamental process of integrating basic science and clinical information is problem-based learning (PBL). The faculty facilitated small…

A program devoted to discussion of a patient and the patient's problems, given to incoming medical students at the State University of New York at Buffalo as part of a three-day orientation, is described. The exercise gives the student immediate exposure to medical-school-level information. (Author/MLW)