Many educational programs seek to develop skills in evidence-based medicine (EBM). The authors examined the efficacy of teaching the EBM skill of efficiently searching the research literature. They compared students who received brief training in EBM searching skills with those who did not, and assessed the quality of literature searching ...

The exceptionality of the skills of calendrical savants and the role of practice were investigated. Experiment 1 compared four autistic calendrical savants to Professor Conway, a distinguished mathematician with calendrical skills. Professor Conway answered questions over a greater range of years but some savants knew more calendrical regularities. Experiment 2 ...

The teaching of clinical skills within nursing is currently enjoying a resurgence following the implementation of the 'Fitness for Practice Curriculum'. However, the teaching of clinical skills specifically within children's nursing has received little attention within the research arena. This article presents the data of a national postal survey sent ...

Students in the last semester of medical school and experienced junior doctors with no or little training in communication skills were observed while interviewing or informing simulated patients. There was a remarkable similarity in behaviour between the two categories. Communication skills characteristic of common social conversation were learnt spontaneously, while ...

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: To test whether people with cognitive-linguistic impairments following traumatic brain injury could learn to use the Internet using specialized training materials. RESEARCH DESIGN: Pre-post test design. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Seven participants were each matched with a volunteer tutor. Basic Internet skills were taught over six lessons using a ...

AIM: The aim of this study was to explore participants' experience of an accredited counselling skills course and their perception of its impact on practice. DESIGN: A qualitative design was used utilizing a mixed-method approach. Data were collected using semistructured interviews and the repertory-grid technique. Data were analysed using thematic ...

Although many studies have shown that motivational interviewing (MI) is effective in reducing problem behaviors, few have investigated purported causal mechanisms. Therapist interpersonal skills have been proposed as an influence on client involvement during MI sessions and as a necessary precursor to client commitment language. Using the Motivational Interviewing Skills ...

Psychoeducational group work, with its focus on education and psychological growth, is a versatile and effective method of teaching older adults new skills and behaviors. Planning a psychoeducational group should be systematic and well thought out. Each session outline should include objectives, information to be imparted, life-skill experiential activities, and ...

PURPOSE: To evaluate the effect of a compulsory evidence-based medicine (EBM) seminar in critical appraisal skills and the overall acceptance of compulsory EBM seminars for Year 3 medical undergraduate students. METHODS: Small group seminars by peer teaching were conducted for up to 23 undergraduates. Knowledge and skills in EBM before ...

This article reports on the development of the Addiction Counseling Self-Efficacy Scale (ACSES) through two studies. Exploratory factor analysis yielded a five-factor solution that accounted for 65% of the variance. The five factors obtained assess various aspects of addiction counselors' perceived self-efficacy for working with clients in the areas of ...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This review gives an overview of recent developments in the field of communication skills training programs designed for cancer health care professionals. RECENT FINDINGS: The Web of Knowledge was searched for empirical papers published between January 2002 and February 2005. Twenty-two papers were included in the review ...

The perceptual skills underlying anticipatory movement in sport have been the focus of much research over the past 20 years. Methods for training such skills have tended to emphasise explicit specification of discriminative cues and the rules linking changes in the perceptual field with required responses. Recently, researchers have begun ...

Communication skills are the cornerstone of the patient-provider relationship in cancer care. Lack of these skills can diminish patient disclosure, increase patient anxiety, and decrease satisfaction with care. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the literature regarding the efficacy and outcomes of communication skills training programs for healthcare ...

The competence of clinical and procedural skills possessed by medical students on graduation have received considerable importance in recent years. This questionnaire-based study was conducted at B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, Dharan, Nepal with an aim to assess the perception about clinical and procedural skills attainment by final-year medical ...

Virtual reality (VR) possesses many qualities that give it rehabilitative potential for people with intellectual disabilities, both as an intervention and an assessment. It can provide a safe setting in which to practice skills that might carry too many risks in the real world. Unlike human tutors, computers are infinitely ...

The increased use of medical equipment to support patient care has led healthcare trusts to place a growing emphasis on providing documented evidence of a practitioner's competence to perform a specific clinical skill or the ability of a practitioner to use certain types of equipment. This article focuses on the ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Educators should document students' clinical skills experience and whether curriculum and other course changes impact this experience. We wanted to determine the factors associated with students' clinical skills experience during their third-year family medicine preceptorship. METHODS: We conducted an observational study of 1,419 third-year students at the ...

Recent controlled studies have supported the effectiveness of anger management training for people with intellectual disabilities (IDs). This report describes an evaluation instrument designed to assess their usage of specific anger coping skills. The Profile of Anger Coping Skills (PACS) is designed for completion by a staff member or carer. ...

The process of acquiring new surgical skills beyond the period of residency training should include selection of a complete educational experience founded on a disease-based approach rather than an isolated intervention. Deliberate practice and avoidance of automaticity through the establishment of learning goals that exceed the current level of performance ...

We examined the relative contribution of decoding, topic knowledge, and strategic processing to the comprehension of social science text in a sample of Norwegian junior high school students. Additionally, we examined the interaction of topic knowledge with strategic processing on students' text comprehension, and whether poor word-level skill could be ...

In the present market, veterinarians with a strong background in career development, practice management, and business skills have a clear advantage in achieving financial success. Although there is ample evidence that the scientific and clinical skills of veterinary college graduates are high, there are also data that suggest that additional ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Performance of laparoscopic surgery requires adequate hand-eye coordination. Video games are an effective way to judge one's hand-eye coordination, and practicing these games may improve one's skills. Our goal was to see if there is a correlation between skill in video games and skill in laparoscopy. Also, ...

Government guidelines on mental health care in England have considerable implications for the level of competency required by the mental health workforce. Implementing these changes requires the widespread introduction of training initiatives whose effectiveness in improving staff performance need to be demonstrated through programme evaluation. This exploratory study evaluates the ...

Clinical skills are an important and necessary part of clinical competence. Simulation plays an important role in many fields of medical education. Although role-playing is common in communication training, there are no reports about the use of student role-plays in the training of technical clinical skills. This article describes an ...

OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that able-bodied people simulating hemiplegia (using the hemiplegic-propulsion pattern [1 arm and 1 leg]) have as much difficulty performing wheelchair skills as people with hemiplegia. DESIGN: Single-blind, controlled comparison of 2 groups. SETTING: Kinesiologic laboratory in a rehabilitation center. PARTICIPANTS: Twenty wheelchair users with hemiplegia ...

OBJECTIVE: There is a clear need to develop psychosocial rehabilitation methods that compensate for neurocognitive deficits common to persons with severe and persistent mental illness. Errorless learning, a compensatory training intervention, has been successful in teaching entry-level job tasks. However, errorless learning's applicability to broader, more complex functions is unknown. ...

BACKGROUND: Years of political instability, civil unrest, and disease have left scores of Ugandans in need of mental health services. However, there are few formal mental health services available in the country. Professional helpers such as clergy, teachers, and healthcare workers who have strong ties to their communities are frequently ...

Possessing a wide mix of non-clinical competences is important for professionals involved in managed clinical networks (MCNs). Skills that stand out are related to interpersonal issues, problem solving, decision-making, and managing change. Interprofessional and interorganizational collaboration is important in health care generally and is not confined to MCNs. Skills are ...

The following issues and requirements related to the implementation of a CT colonography (CTC) service are important: (i) policies are needed regarding the indications for CTC. Concomitant with this is the need for education of potential referrers and patients. Expectations of the procedure, particularly by general practitioners, may be unrealistic ...

Specific skills and affective expressions coded from the problem-solving interactions of 172 newlywed couples were examined in relation to 8-wave, 4-year trajectories of marital satisfaction. Effects varied as a function of whether husbands' versus wives' topics were under discussion and whether husbands' versus wives' satisfaction was predicted, but results indicate ...

This study assessed changes in Self-efficacy scores produced by each of the four steps of instruction used to teach students a therapeutic psychomotor skill used by osteopathic physicians. Volunteering subjects were an entire class of 83 first-year osteopathic medical students (40 men, 43 women, M age = 25.1 yr.). Self-reported ...

This study examined whether a measure of learning potential could predict work skill acquisition in schizophrenia beyond the prediction offered by a single administration assessment. Fifty-seven outpatients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder completed a test-train-test version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test as a measure of their learning potential. The ...

How does one demonstrate competence in microsurgery? This will become an increasingly more important question as further reforms in surgical training and revalidation are implemented. Any assessment of competence should include an assessment of technical skill, but there is presently no validated objective assessment technique to do this. We examine ...

'Communication skills' is now very well established in medical education as an area that needs to be taught at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. But it is a discipline with a low level of challenge--it allows itself constantly to take seriously questions about its fundamentals (such as whether it works ...

BACKGROUND: The timing and methods of teaching clinical skills are some of the main concerns of medical education. PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to compare clinical skills of the 3rd and 6th-year students who acquired clinical skills training within different years and methods. METHODS: Randomly chosen students were ...

Practical skill training courses are an increasingly popular method of teaching surgical skills. Few data are available from instructional courses indicating how successful they are at imparting practical skills to those individuals who attend them. We aimed to identify the skill benefits gained by trainee surgeons attending a 5-day microsurgical ...

Medical Library Association (MLA) members were surveyed to gather background about the current state of expert searching in institutions. The survey results were intended to guide the recommendations of the Task Force on Expert Searching for promoting the importance of expert searching and implementing those recommendations. MLA members were surveyed, ...

The brave new world will find a richer blending of clinical and technical skill development as scenario-based simulation training emerges on the web. The benefits of competency assessment, standards-based education, and just-in-time decision-making support will help organizations serve the patient with greater skill. This is the bridge to crossing the ...

This study evaluated behavioral skills training with added in situ training for teaching safety skills to prevent gun play. Following baseline, each child received two sessions of behavioral skills training and one in situ training session. Additional in situ training sessions were conducted until the child exhibited the safety skills ...

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study is to determine if searchers' observing each others' search processes is an effective training method and if sharing through observation can strengthen search skills. METHOD: A shared email account was established among all public services librarians conducting literature searches at the Ehrman Medical Library. ...

BACKGROUND: Professionalism is increasingly emphasised in medical education. Non-cognitive goals, including values, attitudes and skills, remain challenging to define and measure. The purpose of this study was to better understand these goals and their achievement in the MD programme. METHODS: Graduating medical students, faculty preceptors, residents and other health professionals ...

The homeless population in the US has dramatically increased in the past two decades. People who are homeless often lack skills sets such as stress management and social skills, independent living skills, and skills for vocational and leisure engagement. Best practice vocational education and training programs for individuals who are ...

Current philosophy and policy changes in the National Health Service are encouraging healthcare practitioners to extend their clinical skills to create a more patient-centred approach thus allowing patients to be seen in a timely and more appropriate manner. This often requires further development of the practitioners' skills and knowledge. One ...

Objective measures of surgical skill and cognition are becoming available. A questionnaire study examining surgeons' beliefs towards a skills-based examination, current standards and possible benefits was devised. Three hundred pairs of standardised anonymous questionnaires were sent to consultants and their basic surgical trainees (BSTs) irrespective of surgical specialty. Responses were ...

BACKGROUND: The ability to give and receive feedback effectively is a key skill for doctors, aids learning between all levels of the medical hierarchy, and provides a basis for reflective practice and life-long learning. How best to teach this skill? DISCUSSION: We suggest that a single "teaching the skill of ...

BACKGROUND: Using commercial computer graphics software (TrueSpace), we constructed a virtual-reality model for teaching interscalene brachial plexus block. This tool combines the clarity of schematic drawings and the clinical relevance of video clips and live demonstrations. The aim is to accelerate learning and aid retention of relevant information. METHOD: We ...

OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that the Wheelchair Skills Training Program (WSTP) is effective in improving the wheelchair-handling skills of untrained caregivers. DESIGN: Within-participant comparisons. SETTING: Rehabilitation center and community. PARTICIPANTS: Twenty-four caregivers of manual wheelchair users. INTERVENTIONS: Caregiver participants underwent the WSTP, version 2.4, adapted for caregivers. Training was ...

OBJECTIVE: To develop, implement and evaluate a pilot program targeting rural families with preschool aged children at risk of conduct disorder. DESIGN: A prospective single group repeated measures design. SETTING: Communities in four local government areas in the Mid Western Area Health Service, New South Wales. SUBJECTS: A total of ...

BACKGROUND: Little data exist for the effectiveness of communication skills teaching for medical students in non-English speaking countries. We conducted a non-randomized controlled study to examine if a short intensive seminar for Japanese medical students had any impact on communication skills with patients. METHODS: Throughout the academic year 2001-2002, a ...

OBJECTIVES: To determine the knowledge level and skill base in nurse anesthetists before and after brief ACLS training, and again three months later. METHOD: Thirty nurse anesthetists were tested for knowledge and skill before ACLS training comprising 1-hr lecture and handout, and 1-hr simulation training. Concepts included ABCD, primary and ...