Reviews the racial history of Harvard University Medical School. Highlights include: the schools' founding (1782); unsuccessful petitioning by black men for entry (1850); graduation of the first black student (1896); graduation of the first black women (1951); attacks on affirmative action policies (1976); founding of the Coleus Society (1988);…

Curriculum evaluations were sent to fourth-year medical students randomly assigned to receive the survey either by mail or e-mail. Mailed evaluations yielded a higher return rate, fewer students omitting items, and shorter responses to an open-ended question than evaluations completed via e-mail. (EV)

Describes three approaches to designing and implementing women's health curricula: (1) adding courses to existing curricula; (2) delegating parts of the curriculum to existing courses; and (3) creating new interdisciplinary curricula. Discusses how each might be applied to the topic of domestic violence. Emphasizes the importance of collaborative…

The attitudes of medical students of Indian decent (N=150) toward treating minority clients and using alternative therapies were assessed in relationship to the students' ethnic identity, acculturation, and self-concept. Students with strong ethnic identity and acculturation were more likely to treat minority patients and use alternative…

Instances of intimidation and harassment of junior doctors and medical students have been widely reported in the literature. Studies to date have mostly focused on the incidence of perceived mistreatment and have not explored the causes of or responses to it. This article reports findings from an ethnographic study of a single British medical…

Curriculum concepts successfully used to teach third-year medical students about spirituality in health care can be readily adapted for use in any professional or preprofessional health curriculum. (Contains 1 figure.)

A new measure of concerns about dying was investigated in this psychometric study. The Concerns About Dying instrument (CAD) was administered to medical students, nursing students, hospice nurses, and life sciences graduate students ( N = 207) on two occasions; on one occasion they also completed three related measures. Analyses included…

Assessments of clinical skills of medical students rely increasingly on standardized patients demonstrating medical cases with faculty rating performance. The common finding of inconsistency of scores across cases is often referred to as case specificity. A multivariate generalizability model reveals that overall case specificity cannot explain…

Describes one possible model for e-learning in undergraduate medical education with an emphasis on supporting and managing curriculum development. The Sheffield Networked Learning Environment (NLE) was developed in collaboration with other medical schools. (Author/SOE)

The increase in litigation by students who are dissatisfied with their assessment, and to a lesser extent the time and monetary costs of student appeals makes it imperative that institutions adopt a robust assessment strategy. The concern of consumers with respect to professional services offered by students after graduation is also an issue. This…

Measures of values typically appraise the construct globally, across life domains or relative to a broad life domain such as work. We conducted two studies to construct and initially validate an occupation- and context-specific values measure. Study 1, based on a sample of 192 medical students, describes the initial construction and item analysis…

Students inaccurately assess their own skills, especially high- or low-performers on exams. This study assessed whether regression effects account for this observation. After completing the Infection and Immunity course final exam (IIF), second year medical students (N = 143) estimated their performance on the IIF in terms of percent correct and…

Objective: Standardized patients are used in teaching medical students and evaluating their clinical skills during the psychiatric clerkship. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the addition of a Psychiatry Clinical Standardized Patient Examination (PCX) during the third-year clerkship improved students' performances on the…

Objective: The psychopharmacologist designation currently pervades and heavily influences the practice, perception, and teaching of clinical psychiatry. The authors hope to make a case and provide the raw material for informed discussion of this role during psychiatric residency training. Method: A definition for the psychopharmacologist is…

Objective: Giving performance feedback to students in psychiatry requires particular delicacy and skill since a critique of the subjective artistry of the psychiatric interview may be felt more personally than a critique of an objective skill, such as eliciting a reflex or applying a stethoscope to the chest. Thus, one would expect that…