A study of student attitudes toward learning and their responses to instructional variables during clinical teaching suggests that a student's motivation to learn can be significantly enhanced by attention to the context in which instruction occurs. The encouragement of the learning process rather than the transmission of knowledge is advocated.…

A follow-up survey on senior medical students in North Carolina tracing their professional orientations since their freshman year is reported. Focus is on their attitudes toward four issues: physician-patient relationships; political and economic changes in medicine; treatment of women physicians and patients; and maldistribution of physicians.…

Graduate training in clinical veterinary medicine is discussed. The options available to the student and problems that must be dealt with are presented, along with the requirements to accomplish a finely structured program that satisfies the needs of both the trainee and clinical veterinary medicine. (Author/MLW)

Approximately 200 citations on medical education, obtained through the National Library of Medicine, are presented. Topics include continuing education, graduate medical education, medical education in other countries, specialism, medical students, educational history, forensic medicine, educational measurement, medical schools, and teaching…

Graduates of Boston University's accelerated Six-Year College of Liberal Arts-Medical Education Combined Degree Program are compared with their eight-year classmates. The results indicate that the six-year group achieved higher scores on standardized tests but that both groups were remarkably similar in other aspects, and that the liberal arts…

The key element in a clerkship in family practice at Community Hospital, Santa Rosa, California, is the student's General Medical Clinic. Under the supervision of a family physician teacher, senior medical students work as a team with family nurse practitioners caring for patients. (Author/JMD)

A training program was developed for fellows in child psychiatry at the University of California-Los Angeles Neuropsychiatric Institute to acquaint them with school consultation in the area of sex education. Results of the program, which involved team teaching with fifth and sixth grade teachers, and implications for such programs are discussed.…

Survey of Wayne State University (Michigan) 542 medical students found significantly more third-year than second-year students reporting personal experience of mistreatment or discrimination. Students specializing in family medicine reported the lowest rates of mistreatment, those in obstetrics/gynecology and surgery the highest. Perception also…

Because of declining participation, the National Health Service Corps' role in improving rural access to primary health care has shifted from placement of scholarship-obligated professionals to recruitment of volunteers and increased emphasis on retention of current providers. Successful care systems include group practices, community-oriented…

A discussion of medical education in Germany, particularly since unification of East and West Germany, looks at the number of practicing physicians in Germany and their practice settings, number of medical students, medical school admission policies and curricula, and nature of postgraduate training. Proposed reforms are outlined, and the…

Describes a task-oriented assessment of two MEDLINE searching systems by medical students, one using Boolean searching on human-indexed thesaurus terms and one using natural language searching on words in the title, abstract, and indexing terms. Highlights include user certainty in answering questions, time needed, and user satisfaction.…

Implications of case specificity in two computer-based clinical-simulation examination cases were examined by a classical measurement approach and by a Bayesian analysis of test characteristics. Results from 163 medical students indicate that such examinations cannot be used in high-stakes situations without additional research. (SLD)

A study found that the admission interview scores for 62 Dartmouth Medical School (New Hampshire) applicants correlated positively with dean's letter ratings given 4 years later and that interview scores were better predictors of ratings than were total Medical College Admission Test scores or science grade point averages. (Author/MSE)

The 115 African-American and other nontraditional medical students attending a summer program in study skills and academic preparation to promote achievement and retention were compared with 82 nonattendees on demographic and academic measures. Little difference was found in the groups, except that attendees felt the program helped them adjust to…

A method for classifying students according to the breadth of their premedical preparation is presented, and medical school performances and career plans of students thus classified are compared. Grouping is according to undergraduate major, nonscience-to-science course hour ratio, and extracurricular involvement. The method is found useful for…