PURPOSE: To measure what proportion of student clerkship performance can be attributed to teachers' educational skills as reported by students. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: From August 1992 to June 1994, we collected critiques of teacher skills from 314 third-year students at the end of a 12-week medicine clerkship. Interns, residents, attending ...

OBJECTIVE: Training in physical diagnostic skills is an important part of undergraduate medical education. The objective of this study was to study the outcome of skills training at four medical schools. CONTEXT: At the time of the study, three schools had a traditional lecture-based curriculum and one school had a ...

AIM: To assess the interest of Croatian medical students in going to foreign countries and foreign medical students' interest in coming to Croatia for one-month professional and research clerkship in the period from 1996 to 2000. METHOD: Data were obtained from contracts between Croatian Medical Students' International Committee and other ...

Dramatic changes in health care have stimulated reform of undergraduate medical education. In an effort to improve the teaching of generalist competencies and encourage learning in the outpatient setting, the Society of General Internal Medicine joined with the Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine in a federally sponsored initiative to develop ...

Patient encounter logs may provide an important early opportunity to assess beginning clinical students' attention to and experience with many medical problems. However, there are reasons to doubt the completeness of traditional paper logs. The family practice clerkship at Washington University in St. Louis has tried a series of structured ...

This project provides educational support for students enrolled in a family practice clerkship by supplying PDA-based clinical references and tools to collect information about the patients they see and the seminars they attend. Each student is supplied with a Handspring Visor Deluxe to use during the clerkship. Supplied software includes ...

BACKGROUND: A two-week elective clerkship in clinical oncology is offered to third-year medical students. METHODS: Two students at a time participated in the rotation and spent time with attendings in a one-to-one setting in outpatient clinics in the cancer specialties. The students also attended multidisciplinary tumor boards. Grand rounds, peer ...

BACKGROUND: A comprehensive and up-to-date curriculum requires periodic formal review to ensure it continues to meet learners' needs. PURPOSE: This study describes a model for evaluating a surgery clerkship curriculum designed to determine the appropriateness of its learning objectives to the general professional education of a physician. METHODS: A survey ...

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES: Traditional oral and written examinations can be limited in predicting future clinical performance. Therefore Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) have been introduced in other specialties. The authors assessed their value in radiology. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study includes 122 Harvard medical students who undertook 1-month compulsory clerkships ...

Developing housestaff and faculty in their roles as medical educators is a dynamic process. The rigorous clinical evaluation method used during the third-year internal medicine clerkship at the Uniformed Services University uniquely incorporates faculty development into the process of evaluation and generating feedback for students. Formal evaluation sessions are held ...

BACKGROUND: Curriculum planning is an essential process at any institution of learning. Currently, at Indiana University, a 1-week required otorhinolaryngology clerkship is being considered for removal from the curriculum, and this exposure is planned for integration into other primary care clerkships. A data collection system for patient encounters was created ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Important differences exist in traditional medical education by gender of the teachers and learners. Much less is known about how gender influences educational experiences in community-based ambulatory settings. In this study, we explored how community-based teaching and learning varies by gender of the students and preceptors. METHODS: ...

Students often are encouraged to elect a study month prior to taking the USMLE II. OBJECTIVE: To determine if a study month prior to the September USMLE II improves student test performance. METHODS: Student clerkship sequence was prospectively recorded for each senior at a large midwestern medical school during the ...

The teaching of prevention to students in internal medicine has come into much sharper focus in the past decade or so, and the ongoing development of a strong scientific base for clinical preventive services has led to broad acceptance of the principles and practice of prevention in internal medicine. This ...

PURPOSE: To explore the effects of practice, patient, and encounter variables on students' participation in a third-year primary care clerkship. METHOD: In 1995-96, 154 students, randomly assigned to ambulatory teaching sites, completed for each patient encounter a scannable card indicating the patient's age range, gender, and insurance type, the setting ...

OBJECTIVES: This study examines the impact on students of a brief general practice clerkship, during a curriculum that is otherwise almost entirely hospital-based and in a practice environment that often does not encourage good primary care. DESIGN: 15 focus group discussions were held with a total of 110 students, as ...

HYPOTHESIS: Direct, face-to-face feedback regarding a medical students' clinical performance will not increase critical, objective analysis of their performance. METHODS: A new ward evaluation system (NS) was used concurrently with our standard written ward evaluation system (OS). The two methods were directly compared using a standard t test. The OS ...

BACKGROUND: Traditionally important components of the surgical clerkship curriculum include lectures, small-group sessions, readings, clinical exposure, and testing. Time constraints require compromise among all these elements. At our institution, clinical exposure of medical students varies according to their team assignments. They differ primarily in exposure to such topics as trauma, ...

BACKGROUND: Traditional clinical clerkships have been based on the apprenticeship model of learning, with opportunistic teaching by doctors on presenting patients. Students at King's College School of Medicine, London had expressed concern that they were receiving inequitable experiences in different clerkships. This had become more apparent since the introduction of ...

PURPOSE: To investigate the impact of self-assessed diagnostic strengths and weaknesses on medical students' allocation of learning time (one indicator of self-directed learning) during a third-year internal medicine clerkship. METHOD: In 1997-98, 107 students at the University of Michigan Medical School self-assessed their diagnostic skills in 14 clinical areas before ...

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to adapt the technology of the World Wide Web to the teaching and evaluation of medical students participating in the radiology clerkship at our institution. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Teaching modules were placed on a local intranet site. One hundred two student ...

PURPOSE: To investigate the effectiveness of a standardized vascular clinic (SVC) in teaching diagnostic and management skills for common vascular problems, as compared with that of the traditional ambulatory setting. METHODS: Third-year medical students participating in the required surgical clerkship participated in this study. Students were randomly assigned to attend ...

Recent changes and trends in health care delivery have required medical schools to use multiple sites to obtain adequate patient exposure for their students. Decentralization of clinical undergraduate medical education may lead to a lack of continuity in curricula, evaluation, and feedback. We describe the use of interactive videoteleconferencing as ...

PURPOSE: To compare the performances of three evaluation methods in detecting deficiencies of professionalism among third-year medical students during their ambulatory care and inpatient ward rotations of a core internal medicine clerkship. METHOD: From 1994 to 1997, 18 students at The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences failed to ...

BACKGROUND: This study was designed to examine the validity of a surgery clerkship's performance evaluation system. The study also assessed faculty members' confidence in how clerks are evaluated and promotion decisions made. METHODS: Student files from five classes (n = 339) were analyzed. A 25-item published survey designed to study ...

BACKGROUND: A standardized patient examination may assess unique learning in an ambulatory clerkship but, as with written tests, may be affected by student maturation. PURPOSE: To explore the effect of timing and order of a medicine ambulatory clerkship on student performance of a standardized patient examination (SPE). METHODS: All students ...

BACKGROUND: Much of medical education has shifted from the hospital to ambulatory settings where each student works with a preceptor. PURPOSE: Our objectives were to describe the nature of community-based learning and to explore how learning experiences vary by type of health care visit. METHODS: This prospective study used both ...

Patient encounter logs allow faculty to monitor students' clinical experiences, especially in decentralized clerkships. However, there are generally tradeoffs involving the expressiveness of patient encounter forms, the effort required to complete the forms, and the utility of the forms for informing the clerkship director. The family practice clerkship at Washington ...

Using a specially designed instrument, the authors examined physician assistant students' multicultural sensitivity at four points before, during, and after the 30 months of a master's degree program. The students (n = 19) were found to have become more multiculturally sensitive by the end of the program, even in the ...

PURPOSE: To determine whether clinical experiences in the preclinical years improve medical students' performances in a third-year clerkship. METHOD: A cohort study reviewed the pediatrics clerkship performances of 400 Eastern Virginia Medical School students in the graduating classes of 1996 through 1999. The first two classes completed a traditional preclinical ...

BACKGROUND: Little is known about long-term improvements in medical students' knowledge, attitudes, and use of blood and body fluid precautions following preclinical training. METHODS: We evaluated an educational and skills-training program emphasizing double gloving for high-risk surgical procedures. Baseline surveys measuring knowledge, attitudes, and readiness to use specific precautions were ...

OBJECTIVE: To compare the reported experiences and performance on end-of-course examinations of students completing their pediatric clerkship at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), Omaha, with that of students completing their clerkship in a community pediatrician's practice (CPP) outside the Omaha metropolitan area. DESIGN: Cohort study. SETTING: Private and/or ...

PURPOSE: To quantify the censure of potentially negative information in dean's letters. METHOD: Concordance between 532 dean's letters and the corresponding transcripts was determined for six variables (failing grade in a preclinical course, marginal preclinical course grade, failing grade for a clinical rotation, marginal clinical rotation grade, leave of absence, ...

The authors describe the first four years (1995-1998) in which the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine operated an evaluation system to monitor students' professional behaviors longitudinally through their clinical rotations. The goals of this system are to help "turn around" students found to have behaved unprofessionally, to ...

OBJECTIVE: Many medical schools have drawn up lists of basic clinical skills that students are required to have mastered at the end of medical training. To determine whether undergraduate students actually perform these basic clinical skills during clerkships and whether different approaches to skills training led to different results, we ...

OBJECTIVE: To determine the effect that a 3-year primary-care course experience with family medicine, internal medicine, or pediatric preceptors would have on clerkship performance in pediatrics and internal medicine. DESIGN: In 1 academic year, third-year students were divided retrospectively into 3 groups based on preceptor type in the primary care ...

The authors review the methods by which U.S. medical schools have evaluated student achievement during the twentieth century, especially for the assessment of noncognitive abilities, including clinical skills and behaviors. With particular reference to the current decade, information collected by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) is used to ...

PURPOSE: To determine learning outcomes from the students' perspective on the clinical portion of a third-year primary care ambulatory clerkship. METHOD: Over 18 months (December 1994 to June 1996), students at the Medical College of Wisconsin identified what they had learned during the clerkship in each of seven learning settings. ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: A school-wide curriculum renewal led to a new clerkship curriculum that teaches core family practice competencies by focusing on the process of care in generalist practice. The organizing framework consists of five prototypic visits and their encounter tasks: 1) new problem visit, 2) checkup visit, 3) chronic ...

OBJECTIVES: This paper describes implementation of the learner-centred learning goal within the primary care clerkship at a Midwestern, United States medical school. DESIGN: The learner-centred learning goal exercise was developed to tailor students' educational activities to their personal level of development and to enhance their commitment to life-long learning in ...

At most medical schools, students are offered limited or sporadic experiences in plastic surgery. This is unfortunate because all physicians need to possess the knowledge and skills to evaluate skin lesions and participate in wound management. Also, students who are considering a career in plastic surgery do not have adequate ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The value of problem-based learning (PBL) in the preclinical years of medical school has been described widely in the literature. This study evaluates student and faculty perceptions of PBL during the clinical years of medical school, on a family medicine clerkship. METHODS: Students used a 4-point scale ...

BACKGROUND: Peer and self assessment may contribute a unique and insightful perspective to a students' performance. This study investigates the association between self, peer, and faculty evaluations in the intimate setting of a problem-based tutorial group. METHODS: Third-year medical students participating in the required third-year surgical clerkship during the 1996-97 ...

BACKGROUND: Faculty often presume that students possess adequate physical examination skills upon graduation. Yet assessments of their performance with these skills often reveal deficiencies. This study was designed to determine if students' physical examination skills improved during their clerkship year. METHODS: Sixty-six students performed four specific physical examinations on patients ...

CONTEXT: In order to optimize student learning during clinical rotations, the learning situation could be better structured. A student log was developed in order to improve the structure of clinical education. In this log, students systematically register essential learning activities. Students record daily the patient problems with which they had ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: This study validated the evaluation methods used in a family medicine clerkship by comparing students' scores to how students are rated in their first year of residency by residency directors. The clerkship evaluations consisted of three components: problem solving in small groups, clinical evaluations, and a final ...

BACKGROUND: Medical students may be at high risk for occupational exposures to blood. OBJECTIVE: To measure the frequency of medical students' exposure to infectious body substances, to identify factors that affect the probability of such exposure, and to suggest targets for the prevention of such exposure. DESIGN: Review of all ...

In 1994, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine established a Primary Care Track (PCT) with an integrated curriculum as part of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Generalist Physician Initiative. This study compared the performance of the first cohort of students to participate in the PCT third year with that ...

OBJECTIVES: Intranet technology is the application of Internet tools in local networks. Due to the diversification of hardware and the need for international cooperation, cross-platform systems with network access are required for computer-based training (CBT). The latest advances in Web technology make it feasible to have interactive CBT on the ...

BACKGROUND: This study examined the influence of the quality of faculty members' teaching on student performance in a third-year surgery clerkship. METHODS: Eighty-nine third-year students on a surgery clerkship completed preceptor evaluation forms. The faculty member's overall score was the mean of ratings from all the third-year students for whom ...