Empathy is desirable in all health care professionals in their interactions with patients and each other. Empathy in its cognitive (perspective-taking) and affective forms has been well-studied in the literature and in fact, is shown in most studies to decline during undergraduate and graduate medical education. Empathy has also been shown to be…

Perceived psychosocial abilities (i.e., competence in addressing the psychosocial aspects of patient care) and low frustration tolerance (LFT) (i.e., intolerance of physical or emotional discomfort) have been established as significant attributes of experienced medical professionals. We aimed to expand our understanding of the role motivation…

Resident physicians' clinical training poses unique challenges for the delivery of safe patient care. Residents face special risks of involvement in medical errors since they have tremendous responsibility for patient care, yet they are novice practitioners in the process of learning and mastering their profession. The present study explores…

The practice of medicine involves inherent ambiguity, arising from limitations of knowledge, diagnostic problems, complexities of treatment and outcome and unpredictability of patient response. Research into doctors' tolerance of ambiguity is hampered by poor conceptual clarity and inadequate measurement scales. We aimed to create and pilot a…

Internists are required to perform a number of procedures that require mastery of technical and non-technical skills, however, formal assessment of these skills is often lacking. The purpose of this study was to develop, implement, and gather validity evidence for a procedural skills objective structured clinical examination (PS-OSCE) for internal…

Students' first-year academic success plays a critical role on their overall development in college, which implies the need to concentrate on identifying ways to improve students' first-year academic success. Different from most research on the subject, this study attempted to combine the sociological perspective of college impact with a…

Simulation-based surgical skills training during preclinical education is a persistent challenge due to time constraints of trainees and instructors alike. Self-directed practice is resource-efficient and flexible; however, insight into technical proficiency among trainees is often lacking. The purpose of this study is to prospectively assess the…

In medical education, student distress is known to hamper learning and professional development. To address this problem, recent studies aimed at helping students cope with stressful situations. Undergraduate students in clinical practice frequently use experiences of surrounding peers to estimate their abilities to master such challenging…

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) implemented work hour restrictions for physicians in training in 2003 that were revised July 1, 2011. Current published data are insufficient to assess whether such work hour restrictions will have long-term impact on residents' education. We searched computer-generated reports…

Testwiseness--that is, the ability to find subtle cues towards the solution by the simultaneous comparison of the available answer options--threatens the validity of multiple-choice (MC) tests. Discrete-option multiple-choice (DOMC) has recently been proposed as a computerized alternative testing format for MC tests, and presumably allows for a…

The neonatal resuscitation program (NRP) has been developed to educate physicians and other health care providers about newborn resuscitation and has been shown to improve neonatal resuscitation skills. Simulation-based training is recommended as an effective modality for instructing neonatal resuscitation and both low and high-fidelity manikin…

A good collaboration between health professionals is considered to have benefits for patients, healthcare staff, and organizations. Nevertheless, effective interprofessional collaboration is difficult to achieve. This is particularly true for collaboration between Medical Residents (MRs) and the immediate colleagues they interact with, as Senior…

The aim of this study was to explore how medical students perceive the experience of learning from patient instructors (patients with rheumatism who teach health professionals and students) in the context of coupled faculty-led and patient-led teaching session. This was an explorative study with a qualitative approach based on focus group…

Dealing with emotions is a critical feature of professional behaviour. There are no comprehensive theoretical models, however, explaining how medical students learn about emotions. We aimed to explore factors affecting their emotions and how they learn to deal with emotions in themselves and others. During a first-year nursing attachment in…

Work based learning and teaching in health care settings are complex and dynamic. Sociocultural theory addresses this complexity by focusing on interaction between learners, teachers, and their environment as learners develop their professional identity. Although social interaction between doctors and students plays a crucial role in this…