Medical Education Podcasts 2012

Seeks to quantify opportunities to gain clinical experience within medical-surgical intensive care units over time.

This study compares the development and retention of knowledge in the basic medical sciences between students on the traditional and reformed undergraduate medical curricula, respectively.

Focusing on a subset of assessment factor–learning effect associations, the aim was to determine whether uncommon associations were operational in a broader but similar population to that in which the model was initially derived.

Asks how medical students give meaning to early clinical experiences and how that affects their professional identity development.

This study investigates whether the type of simulation-based learning, and the order in which these activities are carried out, have any effect on the acquisition of knowledge on effective doctor-patient communication strategies.

Examines the relationships among debt, income and career choice by comparing students planning primary care careers with those aspiring to one of the 12 non-PC fields in which median income exceeds US$300 000.

This study explores how providers with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender-focused practices have developed their capacity for working with these populations.

Presents a systematic review of the emerging international research evidence for the use of situational judgement tests (SJTs) for testing important non-academic attributes in selection processes.

Discusses a methodology for developing multiple-choice items based on automatic item generation (AIG) concepts and procedures.

Does the presence of additional medical personnel in consultations alters the focus of the doctor–patient interaction?

Investigates whether increased general awareness about medical error has affected interns’ attitudes toward medical error and disclosure by comparing responses to surveys of interns carried out at either end of the last decade.

Investigates how medical students recognise, respond to and utilise feedback, and to determine whether there are maturational differences in understandings of the role of feedback across academic years in medical school.

A study from two medical schools to ascertain the effectiveness of the Student Support Card from the user’s perspective.

Research from numerous medical schools has shown that students from ethnic minorities underperform compared with those from the ethnic majority. However, little is known about why this underperformance occurs and whether there are performance differences among ethnic minority groups. This study investigates underperformance across ethnic minority groups.

This study sought to evaluate the practices and perceptions of US residency programme directors (PDs) and residency applicants with reference to the use of social media and Internet resources in the resident doctor selection process.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of structured reflection compared with the generation of immediate or differential diagnosis while practising with clinical cases on learning clinical diagnosis.

Examines the impact of the use of video in PBL upon cognitive processes and critical thinking.

An introduction to, and an exploration of, the range of methodological possibilities open to the education researcher who has chosen to use text as a research data source.

The new Medical Education discussion board is now live! Josh Jacobs gives us the full story... To browse, post, or comment, just click 'Discuss' at www.mededuc.com - Josh Jacobs Interview

Prevalence of abnormal cases in an image bank affects the learning of radiograph interpretation - Martin V Pusic interview

LUCAS: a theoretically informed instrument to assess clinical communication in objective structured clinical examinations - Christopher D Huntley interview

Explores the factors that underpin faculty members’ decisions regarding the feedback they give to residents after directly observing them with patients and the factors that influence how feedback is delivered.

Dr Sigrid Harendza discusses the ways in which medical teachers select patients for bedside teaching and tried to determine the factors that affect patient selection.

Historically, assessments have often measured the measurable rather than the important. Over the last 30 years, however, we have witnessed a gradual shift of focus in medical education. We now attempt to teach and assess what matters most. In addition, the component parts of a competence must be marshalled together and integrated to deal with real workplace problems. Workplace-based assessment (WBA) is complex, and has relied on a number of recently developed methods and instruments, of which some involve checklists and others use judgements made on rating scales. Given that judgements are subjective, how can we optimise their validity and reliability?

Education is a complex intervention which produces different outcomes in different circumstances. Education researchers have long recognised the need to supplement experimental studies of efficacy with a broader range of study designs that will help to unpack the ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions and illuminate the many, varied and interdependent mechanisms by which interventions may work (or fail to work) in different contexts. The third State of the Science special issue, published each January, features a paper by Geoff Wong (Centre for Primary Care and Public Health, Blizard Institute, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK), Trisha Greenhalgh, Gill Westhorp and Ray Pawson entitled: ‘Realist methods in medical education research: what are they and what can they contribute?’ Read the paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2923.2011.04045.x/abstract