The University of California, Davis, medical school's intensive summer preentry program for disadvantaged minority students, which previews the first year curriculum, has incorporated a problem-based learning component to augment and prolong its effects. Objective measures of course effectiveness are unavailable; however, self-esteem, study…

The extent that order effects in multiple-station clinical examinations are prevalent is addressed and an analysis of individual student score profiles pertaining to order effects is included. A clinical skills examination using standardized patients was administered to 157 medical students at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at…

This retrospective study of 217 medical students who had sought psychiatric consultation was designed to verify earlier findings. It was hypothesized that more women seek psychiatric consultation; problems would differ according to gender and academic class; women would show more evidence of role strain and remain in treatment longer; etc.…

Offers guidelines for eliciting, modeling, and evaluating written-as-if-spoken dialogues for testing learner's oral productive skills prior to interviewing or in place of interviews. (16 references) (GLR)

A survey of 129 medical residents in an urban teaching hospital revealed a general lack of knowledge about computers, although most had used a microcomputer. Students were most likely to be able to use word processing (73%) and bibliographic retrieval (71%) programs. Better access to and training for computer use are recommended. (Author/MSE)

It is proposed that a recent court decision concerning default on National Health Service Corps scholarship obligations has addressed thoroughly and resolved all the arguments made by defaulting recipients, placing the scholarships in the realm of grant-in-aid programs and removing common-law defenses of the defaulting student. (MSE)

Discusses some current theories of learning motivation and describes how they may relate to the education of physicians, noting frequent disparities between medical schools' stated goals for learners and what is actually taught or rewarded by faculty. While motivation is multifaceted, there are strategies that may be used to strengthen students'…

Over 18 months, Medical College of Wisconsin students identified what they had learned during their clerkships in each of seven learning settings; the 3,030 outcomes were divided into 48 categories, and the ten most-frequent learning outcomes are reported. No significant differences by time of year or rural vs. urban clerkships were found.…

Comments on a set of five analyses that all examine the same data (the discourse of a problem-based learning group in medicine). Argues that each of the analyses is representative not only of a research tradition, but also of a distinct research language and, as such, can be analyzed on the basis of the expressive potential of that language. (SR)

This qualitative study sought to identify the complex issues facing Asian/Pacific Islander (API) women students at one Midwestern medical school as they subjectively experience their medical training. Students reported parental and Asian community influences on their decision to enter medicine; most thought faculty perceive them as "quiet," often…

Rural community-based graduate medical education programs in family practice generate highly trained physicians who typically settle and practice in rural communities. In response to federal funding cutbacks and revised accreditation requirements that threatened its program, the Colville, Washington, Mount Carmel Hospital agreed to fully fund its…

A survey of 702 fourth-year medical students at 18 diverse medical schools investigated student attitudes about residency program reputation and proportion of foreign medical graduates in a residency program as a factor in their program preference. Results suggest that a higher proportion of foreign graduates lessened the program's appeal, while…

In 1994 the Federation of State Medical Boards and the National Board of Medical Examiners instituted a three-step U.S. Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE). Step one of the USMLE may be vulnerable to legal challenge on the basis of minority group bias and lack of construct validity. (SLD)

Describes a study of first-year medical students that tested the effects of problem-based tutorial group discussion on learning new information from a text. Highlights include effects of small-group instruction on cognition; randomized experimental and control groups; recall; and results that showed the positive effects of problem-based group…

A survey of 58 medical residents participating in a 1-2 month rural elective and 51 matched nonparticipants found that participants' interest in rural practice increased significantly after the elective. Respondents suggested means to increase rural career choice, barriers to rural practice, and ways of increasing the rural elective's influence on…