Much has been written recently about medical professionalism, about how we define it, and about how to educate our students in this domain. While there seems to be consensus as to what constitutes professionalism, there remains a good deal of uncertainty as to how best to teach students to meet their obligations to their patients, to society, and…

Continuing medical education is entering a new era. What has been casual and emergent will incresingly be directly related to the professional affairs of the individual practitioners. The medical profession will find itself drawn progressively into the continuing educational activities of other allied health professions. The author discusses…

Because physicians are perceived as powerful and knowledgeable professionals, the language they use to address patients has a tremendous effect on a patient's mental and physical well-being. Physicians often speak to patients in "med-speak," obscure, highly technical terms that cloak the reality of the patient's condition and serve to reinforce…

Eleven judges representing 11 different geographic regions in the United States participated in a standard-setting session designed to determine the possibility of obtaining interjudge consensus and intrajudge consistency simultaneously. Each judge had experience in the field for which standards were being set. The judges rated 65 multiple-choice…

A hearing was held to update information on progress toward immunizing the world's children against diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, measles, and tuberculosis. Immunization programs are regarded as essential in the effort to break the infection-malnutrition cycle in children in developing nations. Witnesses at the hearing included…

This report summarizes a more in-depth report concerning the status of children's health in the United States, and strategies which involve primarily personal health care services for the prevention of death, disease, and injury of children. The report is divided into five major sections. The first discusses the effects of low birthweight on…

A description is given of the process of setting nationwide objectives in disease prevention and health promotion. Five national public health goals for enhancing the health of the population at five major life stages are discussed: (1) infant health and mortality reduction; (2) child health and development; (3) health and health habits of…

Northeastern University's development of an elective course on aspects of cancer prevention for physician assistants is described. Faculty addressed such problems as the selection of course content, the need to make it clinically applicable, and the design of a final product that permits replication of presentation. The course uses a variety of…

This paper describes a method for defining the universe of competencies expected of a general internist. This was accomplished by defining the nature of the medical practice, describing the internal medicine content in terms of subspecialty divisions and general areas of competence, and defining a format for describing competencies. The format for…

Text, illustrations, and exercises are utilized in this set of learning modules to instruct the general public in the prevention and treatment of heart disease. The first module, by James W. Woods, presents a medical definition of high blood pressure, reviews its causes and effects, and discusses its treatment. A script to a slide version of this…

A framework is given for providing comprehensive health education services within a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) setting. In order to be effective, an HMO's health education program needs to be administrationally and organizationally approached as an integral component of the HMO and not as an adjunct service. Three service units of the…

Participants in a workshop on the ethics and problems of medical reference service in public libraries generally concluded that people have a right to information concerning health and librarians should rely on common sense in answering medical reference questions and refrain from interpretation and diagnosis. Presentations included a report on a…

Testimonies and articles, letters, and statements from a congressional hearing of the U.S. Senate concerning nutrition education in medical schools are presented. The hearing was held to ascertain the present status of nutrition instruction in U.S. medical schools, to determine the need for such instruction, and to identify problems with…

This report of a Louis Harris poll on national opinions toward privacy includes the questions asked of each respondent and the responses given in categories related to age, sex, employment, income, and other factors. There are chapters on privacy and the individual; personal privacy in relation to governmental and business institutions; privacy…

Continuing technological advances in computers and communications make possible the integration of data systems and the exchange of data among them on an expanding scale. However, the full effect of these advances cannot be realized unless the need for uniform understanding of the common information (data elements) and their expression in data…