The PLoS Medicine editors reflect on the recent debate about access to medical journals via HINARI, and what now needs to be done to increase open access in the developing world.

A fifty-eight year old man was referred to the Acute Medical Unit by his general practitioner with a generalised erythematous rash. The rash had appeared 3 weeks earlier, initially affecting his back, but had not responded to topical emollient treatment, nor the subsequent addition of an antibiotic.

Abstract:Humility is the medical virtue most difficult to understand and practice. This is especially true in contemporary medicine, which has developed a culture more characterized by arrogance and entitlement than by self-effacement and moderation. In such a culture, humility suggests weakness, indecisiveness, or even deception, as in false modesty. Nonetheless, ...

Teaching at the bedside during attending rounds is considered to be fundamental to medical education. We conducted an ethnographic case study to investigate such teaching in general paediatrics as a social phenomenon and to explore change over time in both the meaning of rounds and the context in which rounds ...

In 1999 a seminal Institute of Medicine report estimated that preventable medical errors accounted for 44,000-98,000 patient deaths annually in U.S. hospitals. In response to this problem, the nation's medical schools, teaching hospitals, and health systems recognized that achieving greater patient safety requires more than a brief course in an ...

Basic and superior reasoning skills are woven into the clinical reasoning process just as they are used to solve any problem. As clinical reasoning is the central competence of medical education, development of these reasoning skills should occur throughout the undergraduate medical curriculum. The authors describe here a method of ...

An important aspect of Chinese academic health science libraries is their involvement in teaching medical information retrieval courses as part of the medical curriculum. Health science librarians in China have a more formal teaching role than is generally found in Western countries, including many full-time teaching positions. This article provides ...

A revised core curriculum for medical ethics and law in UK medical schools has been published. The General Medical Council requires medical graduates to understand law and ethics and behave in accordance with ethical and legal principles. A parallel policy agenda emphasises accountability, the development of professionalism and patient safety. ...

This work was performed in a trial to organize the learning process by focusing on the integration of medical education particularly between the three main subjects: gross anatomy, histology and pathology. It was a theoretical teaching draft designed to be implemented with second year students of the Medical school of ...

WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN ABOUT THIS SUBJECT: Junior doctors feel poorly prepared by their training in Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics and commonly make prescribing errors. Since 1993 the General Medical Council's guidance on undergraduate medical education 'Tomorrow's Doctors' has emphasized the integration of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics teaching within the ...

Previous studies on patient acceptance of medical student teaching were from Western populations and in one setting only. However, there has been no prospective study comparing patient acceptability before and after an actual experience. We studied patient acceptability of medical student teaching in private and public family practices and public ...

To evaluate the perspectives of medical students and patients on bedside teaching (BST). A cross-sectional study was undertaken to elicit patients and learners opinions on BST in Hazrat Rasool Hospital, a university teaching hospital in Tehran, Iran. From June 2008 to September 2008, 100 fourth-year medical students and 100 adult ...

Profound socioeconomic pressures on medical student education have been catalogued extensively. These pressures include teaching patient shortages, teacher shortages, conflicting systems, and financial problems. Many of these problems have been caused by an unregulated free market affecting medicine overall, with market values sometimes overshadowing the academic values of education, research, ...

UK medical school curricula incorporate training in end-of-life care as recommended by Tomorrow's Doctors. Previous research suggests that hospice staff have concerns about the burden on patients when participating in medical student teaching and may gatekeep access to patients. This qualitative study uses semistructured interviews to explore and compare the ...

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this paper is to outline strategies for teaching psychiatry to medical students. The background is that today's medical students are tomorrow's doctors. Undergraduate psychiatry teaching provides us a unique opportunity to instil positive attitudes, knowledge and skills in the medical workforce of the future. Moreover, teaching ...

Outside formal university chemistry classes in Scotland, which existed mainly to fulfil the requirements of medical courses, chemistry teaching was available from extramural lecturers. This form of teaching was often aimed at medical students, who could fulfil their graduation requirements if the lecturer had approved status. However, most of those ...

In their first year of work, newly qualified doctors will care for patients who have palliative care needs or who are dying, and they will need the skills to do this throughout their medical career. The General Medical Council in the United Kingdom has given clear recommendations that all medical ...

The lack of interoperability between repositories of heterogeneous and geographically widespread data is an obstacle to the diffusion, sharing and reutilization of those data. We present the development of an open repositories network taking into account both the syntactic and semantic interoperability of the different repositories and based on international ...

Most clinicians enjoy teaching medical students, but many have had little training as clinical teachers. The General Medical Council (GMC) in 'Good Medical Practice' states 'if you are involved in teaching you must develop the skills, attitudes and practices of a competent teacher' (GMC 2006). Mclean et al.'s (2008) AMEE guide ...

Limited research is available on how best to provide discharge teaching for rehabilitation patients. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of different methods for providing education to increase patient knowledge about discharge medications. Using a convenience sample of patients and family members, a randomized, experimental study ...

A 40 year old previously fit bank executive of Cypriot origin presented to the acute medical take with insidious onset frontal and vertex headaches with features suggesting raised intracranial pressure. He had been under investigation in the outpatient department after developing multiple erythematous lesions on his legs, associated with malaise, ...

BACKGROUND: Several studies in the United Kingdom and Asia have suggested that medical students and residents have particular difficulty in diagnosing and managing patients with neurological problems. Little recent information is available for US trainees. We examined whether students and residents at a US university have difficulty in dealing with ...

A large amount of valuable information is available in plain text clinical reports. New techniques and technologies are applied to extract information from these reports. One of the leading systems in the cancer community is the Cancer Text Information Extraction System (caTIES), which was developed with caBIG-compliant data structures. caTIES ...

The biomedicalist conceptualization of disablement as a personal medical tragedy has been criticized by disability studies scholars for discounting the difference between disability and impairment and the ways disability is produced by socio-environmental factors. This paper discusses prospects for partnerships between disability studies teaching/research and medical education; addresses some of ...

BACKGROUND: With the increased medical student numbers in Australia there is an expectation that general practice will train students, junior doctors and registrars, and the teaching burden for busy general practitioners will rise. OBJECTIVE: We discuss the model of vertical integration of general practice education set up at the Australian ...

Traditional dissection teaching is being reduced in a number of medical schools, particularly in the United Kingdom. In response to this, 12 medical students from Warwick University, UK, traveled to the Island of Grenada for an intensive extracurricular dissection course at St. George's University. This course not only benefited the ...

As the population ages, it is important that graduating medical students be properly prepared to treat older adults, regardless of their chosen specialty. To this end, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the John A. Hartford Foundation convened a consensus conference to establish core competencies in geriatrics for ...

AIM: It is important that medical schools take some account of community expectations for health care when planning curricula. This is particularly important for emerging public health problems such as childhood obesity. The aim of this study was to explore parent attitudes to the role of the doctor in childhood ...

This plenary presentation from the EACH International Conference on Communication in Healthcare in Oslo 2008, takes an honest look at the present state of communication teaching and considers how to take the next steps to move communication into the very centre of medical education. Although clinical communication teaching has become ...

This descriptive study explores the roles and responsibilities of midwives involved in teaching medical students and residents. Surveys were received from 74 academic midwifery practices in the United States that are formally involved in medical education (66% response rate). These practices employ 547 midwives. Most of these midwives have >5 ...

Many midwives are full-time faculty members of departments of obstetrics and gynecology in academic medical centers. As such, they contribute to the medical school's educational mission by teaching undergraduate and postgraduate medical students in both the clinical area and in didactic lectures. Midwives are also instrumental in the development of ...

In a good medical teacher we would like to see a good doctor, a good teacher, a good orator and, overall, a good human being. Many teachers of yesteryears may not have had all these qualities but they had the ability to instil in the student's mind a sense of ...

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE: Contact with patients has important implications for medical students' education. Previous studies have shown that patients in teaching hospitals have positive views about medical education. The aim here was to assess the acceptability of medical education among patients and their companions in a non-teaching private hospital that ...

Marion B. Sulzberger was one of the most famous American dermatologists. He had received his training in dermatology in Zurich (Switzerland) from 1926 to 1929. The collection of moulages in Zurich still preserves outstanding wax models of Sulzberger's scientific work. They are impressive examples of the purpose and value of ...

AIMS: To assess the views of senior medical officers (SMOs) at Auckland City Hospital (Auckland, New Zealand) in the areas of teaching, supervision, and feedback for resident medical officers (RMOs). METHODS: All SMOs at Auckland City Hospital were asked to complete a survey regarding postgraduate medical education. Data was then ...

AIM: We aimed to assess the skills of final year medical students and resident medical officers in recognising and interpreting important common or life-threatening abnormalities in the electrocardiogram (ECG). METHODS: 102 participants at two study sites (52 of whom were final year medical students) attempted to determine the heart rate ...

BACKGROUND: The second half of the consultation (explanation and planning) has been described as neglected in communication skills teaching in medical schools, with programmes concentrating on information gathering. AIMS: To identify the extent and ways in which explanation and planning is taught in medical schools in the United Kingdom. METHODS: ...

OBJECTIVES: Doctors involved in the assessment of children have low confidence in their clinical skills within paediatric musculoskeletal (pMSK) medicine and demonstrate poor performance in clinical practice. Core paediatric clinical skills are taught within undergraduate child health teaching but the extent and content of pMSK clinical skills teaching within medical ...

BACKGROUND: Recommendations for the dermatology content (learning outcomes) of the core undergraduate curriculum were sent to all U.K. medical schools in June 2006. OBJECTIVE: To carry out an audit of the content of the core curriculum in each U.K. medical school against the recommendations for a core undergraduate dermatology curriculum ...

Many colleagues find teaching neurology to today's medical students can be more frustrating than rewarding. Although students are encouraged to expect excellence, some lack enthusiasm and fail to engage with the subject. Medical teachers may have to take some of the responsibility, and it is important that we learn from ...

INTRODUCTION: With declining exposure to the ophthalmologic examination in medical school, medical students and their instructors need a simple, effective method for teaching direct ophthalmoscopy. OBJECTIVE: Evaluation of canisters as direct ophthalmoscopy teaching aids for medical students. METHODS: Two ounce plastic canisters were designed to simulate an eye with 35 ...

Over the past several decades, exciting advances have been made in the art and science of teaching clinical interviewing, which are supported by an ever-growing evidence base documenting their effectiveness. In this second article in a 2-part series, the training and research implications of an innovative approach to improving medication ...

CONTEXT: A study of medical students' perspectives on derogatory and cynical humour was published in 2006. The current study examines residents' and attending doctors' perspectives on the same phenomenon in three clinical departments of psychiatry, internal medicine and surgery. METHODS: Two focus groups were conducted in each of the three ...

BACKGROUND: Medical schools in the developing world have huge shortages in teaching personnel. The medical school in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, is educating medical students to become doctors in a country facing huge economic hardships and with a health care system in crisis. SUMMARY: I traveled to Bulawayo to work as a ...

Physiology education, which occupies an important place in undergraduate medical education, exhibits diversities across the world. Since there was no specific source of information about physiology education in Turkish medical faculties, the authors aimed to evaluate the general status of undergraduate physiology teaching of medical students in Turkey. A questionnaire ...

Escalating healthcare costs in Singapore have produced a significant movement of patients into ambulatory care, and the consequent dearth of clinical teaching materials. This deficiency has likewise prompted the creation of ambulatory teaching clinics and the use of standardised patients and simulators. In the last few decades, educators have utilised ...

OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study was to compare the outcomes of hysterectomies performed by residents under supervision of a teaching physician with those performed by attendings alone. STUDY DESIGN: This was a retrospective cohort analysis of hysterectomies performed at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center from 2004 to 2006. RESULTS: ...

Pharmacogenetic tests allow medications to be tailored to individual patients to improve efficacy and reduce drug toxicity. In 2005, the International Society of Pharmacogenomics (ISP) made recommendations for undergraduate medical teaching in pharmacogenetics. We aimed to establish the quantity and scope of this in British medical schools. An electronic survey ...

OBJECTIVE: This study analyzes the reliability of the PHEEM questionnaire translated into Portuguese. We present the results of PHEEM following distribution to doctors in three different medical residency programs at a university hospital in Brazil. INTRODUCTION: Efforts to understand environmental factors that foster effective learning resulted in the development of ...

A medical education and clinical teaching centre building currently under construction at the University of Aberdeen has been awarded the highest national rating of "Excellent" in the Bespoke category in the 2008 BREEAM Awards, recognising a range of environmental measures incorporated into the design to reduce its carbon footprint and ...