An extensive written examination in pediatric clinical knowledge has been used to compare pediatric nurse practitioners with medical students and residents in pediatrics. Results of the study indicate that the PNPs were comparable in most areas except clinical pathology to the students and residents, sometimes even surpassing them. (LBH)

A course designed to teach medical students and resident physicians group process, functioning, and application is described. It was developed and taught at Michigan State University in response to a multitude of needs and opportunities in the area of medical education and practice. (Author/MLW)

The Internal Medicine In-Training Examination (ITE) is administered during residency training in the United States as a self-assessment and program assessment tool. Performance on this exam correlates with outcome on the American Board of Internal Medicine Certifying examination. Internal Medicine Program Directors use the United States Medical…

Objective: Awareness of the privileges and limits of one's role as physician, as well as recognition and respect for the patient as a human being, are central to ethical medical practice. The authors were particularly interested in examining the attitudes and perceived needs of psychiatric residents toward education on professional boundaries and…

The debate around which factors drive medical students' learning is ongoing and controversial. What is the influence of an assessment's weighting on the motivation of students to study the particular subject? One medical school in London is in a unique position to investigate this question. At our institution, the weighting of Anatomy within the…

Given the important role that anatomical dissection plays in the shaping of medical student attitudes to life and death, these attitudes have not been evaluated in the context of whole body donation for medical science. First year students of anatomy in an Irish university medical school were surveyed by questionnaire before and after the initial…

The University of California at Davis School of Medicine offers a prematriculation program to nontraditional students. As part of the program, students take a 7-day course on the gross anatomy of the upper limb that concludes with a written examination and a practical examination based on prosections. Here, the performance of students who took the…

In South Africa, in the prestigious profession of medicine, women are still in the minority. Men continue to form nearly three quarters of the number of registered practitioners, although social and institutional exclusionary structures have been abolished. It is important to investigate the reasons underlying this state of affairs, which exists…

We developed the Med-e-Conference, an online tool to teach clinical skills to medical students, which integrated problem-based learning with collaborative group tasks. The final task asked students to consider what they had done (reflection). These comments were analysed using content analysis, and 10 themes were elicited. The number of agreements…

Clinical teachers often complain that medical students have forgotten or somehow "lost" knowledge that has been taught at pre-clinical levels at the time of entering the clinical part of education. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore, whether transfer of knowledge was identified as a problem by the teaching staff of…

Background: Medical schools use supplemental peer-teaching programs even though there is little research on students' actual experiences with this form of instruction. Purpose: To understand the student experience of being taught by peers instead of by faculty. Methods: We conducted focus groups with first- and second-year medical students…

Virginia Commonwealth University developed an enhanced medical student geriattic curriculum that includes required home visits and nursing home visits for second year students (180 per year), an annual Forum on Aging for all first and second year students, and small group exercises. We added 30 hours of basic science material to pre-clinical…

Librarians at New York City's Bellevue Hospital Center needed to write a 3-year strategic plan that included technology data. In this article, they describe how they surveyed doctors and residents about their technology and internet use to determine what the Bellevue Medical Library needed to do in order to support those who deliver medical care.…

Communication skills training is an accepted part of undergraduate medical programs nowadays. In addition to learning experiences its importance should be emphasised by performance-based assessment. As detailed checklists have been shown to be not well suited for the assessment of communication skills for different reasons, this study aimed to…

The research reported in this article examined attitudes toward the care of the elderly between and among medical students and residents in training. Data were collected with a 16-item attitude questionnaire. Participants were medical students in their introduction period (prior to clinical experience) and residents of the Department of Internal…