A comparison of patient (n=181) and tutor (n=31) evaluations of medical student (n=41) behavior in an internal medicine clerkship revealed difficulties with patient evaluation of students. The process is time consuming and introduces tension between students and patients, and patients are poor discriminators. (Author/MSE)

One dental education program used patient-instructors to give individual feedback from the patient's perspective to students after each of five interview scenarios. Feedback was constructive and behaviorally oriented. Ratings assessed process and content skills. Results indicates student interpersonal skills improved significantly, content skills…

A triple-contract model of the relationship between a profession and a society includes a hypothetical contract articulating the profession's basic principles, a second contract suggesting the model for real-life face-to-face meetings creating moral terms limiting the relationship between professionals and society, and a third contract containing…

Residents benefit from general practice dental residencies by getting training in areas not adequately covered in the undergraduate curriculum and having time to mature professionally. Patients benefit from improved care and increased access to services. Greater attention should go to the quality and types of services such programs make possible.…

A multistation clinical examination using standardized patients was used over 4 years to assess the interpersonal skills of 346 fourth year medical students, 51 internal medicine residents, and 71 foreign medical graduates seeking admission to graduate study. Results indicate that a reliable assessment of interpersonal skills can be achieved this…

Case means and case failures in performance-based medical student evaluations were examined to evaluate the consistency of ratings made by two or more standardized patients (SPs) simulating the same case. Results demonstrate a need for caution in interpreting scores obtained from a case checklist completed by multiple SPs. (Author/MSE)

A discussion of pharmaceutical curriculum design to meet the competency needs of professional pharmacists looks at the nature of competency, anticipates some of the demands of such a curriculum, describes some methods of organizing curriculum elements, and provides a brief bibliography. (MSE)

A study investigated whether the more efficiently graded extended-matching questions were equivalent to short-answer questions in evaluating medical students' (n=98) ability to elicit physical findings and generate diagnoses and treatment plans, using standardized-patient examinations. The differences found in the two question types did not favor…

Medical faculty who choose and tell stories appropriately, especially if they are of their own clinical experiences, can stimulate students to examine their own values and attitudes. A sample story illustrates how the technique can help students address crises in professionalization and aspects of the doctor-patient relationship. (Author/MSE)

A study assessed the feasibility of sequential testing of medical students using standardized patients. Sequential testing passes students who score well on the first segment of the test thus eliminating additional student-standardized patient encounters. Subjects were six classes of Southern Illinois University students (n=404). Results strongly…

A national medical school survey found 141 oaths given in 1989, indicating some offered a choice. Analysis found few demonstrated respect for patient autonomy; none included veracity. It is concluded that the oaths failed to address the changing physician-patient relationship and affirmed traditional principles of nonmaleficence and beneficence.…

A study found that trained standardized patients could provide a reliable assessment of English proficiency of foreign medical graduates by comparison with a standardized language test, but further research is needed to determine whether it is necessary to provide a clinical context for language assessment. (MSE)

Analysis of patient logbooks kept by 75 medical students in a family medicine clerkship provided a great deal of information about the nature of students' experience, changes taking place as the year progressed, the degree to which program objectives were being met, and differences between sites. (MSE)

This paper argues that medical ethics education relies too much on strategies that target ethical thinking and should focus more on students as ethical actors in specific clinical contexts, responding to ethical dilemmas. Traditional approaches may not offer the skills students need to learn norms of ethical behavior. Strategies for encouraging…

A study investigated possible differences in standardized patient examination scores for three groups of undergraduate (n=176) and graduate (n=221) medical students assessed at different sites over two years. Results show no systematic change in scores over testing dates, suggesting no problems with breach of test security. (MSE)