BMC Medical Education

BACKGROUND: Monitoring and management of undergraduate medical education (UME) curricula are crucial contributors to successful medical education. This systematized review explores the different approaches that medical schools have to UME curriculum management or monitoring in order to provide a basis for curriculum managers. METHODS: PubMed, Science Direct, Scopus, and ERIC were searched with no time limitation using the keywords curriculum, medicine, management, monitoring, and alignment...

BACKGROUND: Rising numbers of patients with multiple-conditions and complex care needs mean that it is increasingly important for doctors from different specialty areas to work together, alongside other members of the multi-disciplinary team, to provide patient centred care. However, intra-professional boundaries and silos within the medical profession may challenge holistic approaches to patient care. METHODS: We used Q methodology to examine how postgraduate trainees (n = 38) on a range of different specialty programmes in England and Wales could be grouped based on their rankings of 40 statements about 'being a good doctor'...

BACKGROUND: Given the influence that personality can have on empathy, this study explores the relationship between empathy and personality, using three different measures of empathy, and taking into account gender and specialty preference. METHODS: Cross-sectional study. One hundred and ten medical students completed the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, the Empathy Quotient, and the NEO-FFI Big Five personality model. Multivariable linear regression was performed to assess the association between personality traits and empathy...

BACKGROUND: Suicide is a national public health crisis and a critical patient safety issue. It is the 10th leading cause of death overall and the second leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults (15-34 years old). Research shows 80% of youth who died by suicide saw their primary care provider within the year of their death. It is imperative that primary care providers develop the knowledge and skills to talk with patients about distress and suicidal thoughts, and to assess and respond in the context of the ongoing patient - primary care provider relationship...

BACKGROUND: Ensuring physiotherapy students are well prepared to work safely and effectively in culturally diverse societies upon graduation is vital. Therefore, determining whether physiotherapy programs are effectively developing the cultural responsiveness of students is essential. This study aimed to evaluate the level of self-perceived cultural responsiveness of entry level physiotherapy students during their training, and explore the factors that might be associated with these levels...

BACKGROUND: Junior doctors undertake a significant amount of prescribing; however, they are not well prepared for this, and report they would like more training in their undergraduate courses. To address this we tested a pharmacist-led prescribing program for final-year medical students. METHODS: Sixteen final-year students took part in the program. The program involved students writing prescriptions and getting feedback from clinical pharmacists, undertaking prescribing and calculation tutorials, and spending time in the pharmacy department...

BACKGROUND: During professional identity formation (PIF), medical students and young doctors enter the process of socialization in medicine with their preexisting personal identities. Here, the authors focused on how gender influences both the professional and personal identities of doctors. The authors' particular research question was how the professional and personal identities of female doctors are formed in Japan, a patriarchal and highly masculinized country, especially before and after marriage and childbirth...

BACKGROUND: Nurses are responsible for implementing appropriate measures to reduce hospital infections, especially with multidrug resistant bacteria, so nursing students should learn about microbiology. This helps them to understand bacterial dissemination and infectious disease control. Because of tight schedules, however, its teaching is limited in undergraduate nursing classes in Japan. We therefore tested whether a simple short practical session in a microbiology class could help to improve undergraduate nursing students' awareness of bacterial traits and how to prevent infections...

BACKGROUND: Frontline healthcare workers are critical to meeting the maternal, newborn and child health Sustainable Development Goals in low- and middle-income countries. The World Health Organization has identified leadership development as integral to achieving successful health outcomes, but few programs exist for frontline healthcare workers in low-resource settings. METHODS: An 18-month pilot leadership development program was designed and implemented at Greater Accra Regional Hospital, a tertiary care facility in Ghana...

BACKGROUND: There is a concern that traditional instruction based methods of learning do not adequately prepare students for the challenges of physical therapy practice. Self-directed learning is considered to be the most appropriate educational approach to enhance life-long learning as it enhances self-efficacy. This study compares outcomes in two educational approaches: self-directed learning (SDL), and traditional instruction based learning (IBL). METHODS: In this non-randomized experimental study two groups of second year physiotherapy students were compared using pre-post-test assessments...

BACKGROUND: Feedback is regarded a key element in teaching communication skills. However, specific aspects of feedback have not been systematically investigated in this context. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of communication skills training (CST) integrating specific, structured and behavioral feedback. METHODS: We condensed best practice recommendations for feedback in a CST for undergraduate medical students and compared the effect of specific, structured and behavior-orientated feedback (intervention group CST-behav) to general, experience-orientated feedback (CST- exp...

BACKGROUND: To meet the patients' needs and to provide adequate health care, students need to be prepared for interprofessional collaborative practice during their undergraduate education. On interprofessional training wards (IPTW) undergraduates of various health care professions potentially develop a mutual understanding and improve their interprofessional competencies in clinical practice. To enhance collaboration of 6th-year medical students and nursing trainees in the third year of their vocational training an IPTW (Heidelberger Interprofessionelle Ausbildungsstation - HIPSTA) was implemented at the University Hospital Heidelberg, Germany...

BACKGROUND: We sought to determine whether the Reflective Practice Questionnaire (RPQ) is a reliable measure of reflective capacity and related characteristics in medical students. We also planned to learn how the RPQ could be used in medical education. METHODS: The RPQ is a 40 item self-report questionnaire that includes a multi-faceted approach to measuring reflective capacity. It also includes sub-scales on several other theoretically relevant constructs such as desire for improvement, confidence, stress, and job satisfaction...

BACKGROUND: Clinical teaching plays a crucial role in the transition of medical students into the world of professional practice. Faculty development initiatives contribute to strengthening clinicians' approach to teaching. In order to inform the design of such initiatives, we thought that it would be useful to discover how senior medical students' experience of clinical teaching may impact on how learning during clinical training might be strengthened. METHODS: This qualitative study was conducted using convenience sampling of medical students in the final two months of study before qualifying...

BACKGROUND: Physicians need a set of specific competences to perform well in interprofessional teams in their first year of residency. These competences should be achieved with graduation from medical school. Assessments during undergraduate medical studies are mostly rated by supervisors only. The aim of our study was to compare the rating of core facets of competence of medical students late in their undergraduate training as well as the rating confidence between three different groups of assessors (supervisors, residents, and nurses) in an assessment simulating the first day of residency...

BACKGROUND: Chinese dentists are obliged to provide reliable guidance to patients about tooth brushing. However, attitudes and behaviours of Chinese dental students regarding oral health have been insufficient. Traditionally, dental students were taught how to brush, but not how to evaluate tooth brushing. Here, we applied a three-session-procedure (TSP) based on experiential learning (EL) in a tooth brushing course for Chinese dental students. The aim was to improve dental students' knowledge, practice of tooth brushing and self-evaluation, which may help cultivate their ability to conduct evaluation for friends, relatives and future patients...

BACKGROUND: There is a lack of studies on factors in the curriculum, study environment and individual differences that can promote well-being among medical students as a response to the frequent reports on the negative health effects of study demands among medical students worldwide. OBJECTIVE: This study investigates differences in well-being among today's Norwegian medical students compared with students 20 years ago, the most important predictors of well-being today, and whether there have been any changes in the levels of some of these factors since the period analysed...

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between Korean pharmacy students' empathy and psychological need satisfaction and their levels of burnout and psychological well-being, using structural equation modeling. METHODS: The participants were 452 pharmacy students from five South Korean universities. The Jefferson Scale of Empathy (Health Professions Students version), the Activity-Feeling States Scale, and the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Student Survey were used to assess empathy, psychological need satisfaction, and burnout, respectively...

BACKGROUND: Stigma and discrimination are a significant public health concern and cause great distress to people with mental illness. Healthcare professionals have been identified as one source of this discrimination. In this article we describe the protocol of an international, multisite controlled study, evaluating the effectiveness of READ, an anti-stigma training for medical students towards patients with mental illness. READ aims to improve students' ability to minimise perceived discriminatory behaviours and increase opportunities for patients, therefore developing the ability of future doctors to address and challenge mental illness related discrimination...

BACKGROUND: Writing multiple choice questions may be a valuable tool for medical education. We asked medical students to generate multiple choice questions and studied its effect on their exams. We hypothesized that students generating questions would improve their learning. METHODS: We randomized students in their second and third years at the School of Medicine to write four multiple choice questions on two different sections of General Pathology (Immunopathology and Electrolyte and acid-base status; second year) and Pathophysiology (Blood and Respiratory system; third year)...