Objective: The attitudes of medical students towards psychiatry and psychotherapy were examined considering the extent of their education, previous psychiatry experience, the evaluation of the course, their career intentions and socio-demographic variables. Methods: Five hundred and eight medical students in their second, fifth, ninth and tenth…

This paper presents a critical reflection on the contributions and challenges associated with one rhetorical approach to studying teaching and learning communication in health professions education. A rhetorical approach treats language as a social act, and attends to the role of language in establishing professional identities and relationships.…

Objective: To examine the increase in self-perceived clinical competence during a three-year postgraduate training in general practice and to explore the relation between the growth of self-perceived competence and several background variables. Design: Cohort, 1995-1998. Setting: Three-year Postgraduate Training for General practice in the…

Background: The present study was performed to evaluate the effectiveness of a training course designed to improve the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of healthcare personnel to allow them to provide a comprehensive community-based antenatal care (ANC) program in rural Paraguay. Methods: Sixty-eight of 110 healthcare personnel in the Caazapa…

The ECFMG[R] Clinical Skills Assessment (CSA[R]) was developed to evaluate whether graduates of international medical schools are ready to enter graduate training programs in the United States. The performance-based patient note exercise is specifically used to assess an examinee's ability to summarize, synthesize and interpret the data collected…

Peer assessment provides a powerful avenue for students to receive feedback on their learning. Although student perceptions of peer assessment have been studied extensively in higher education, little qualitative research has been undertaken with medical students in problem-based learning (PBL) curricula. A qualitative study of students' attitudes…

What is it like to be a clinical educator? How do clinical educators experience and describe their continuing journey of becoming a clinical educator? Within the model developed in this research, dimensions of being a clinical educator were identified. These dimensions include (a) having a sense of self (and the impact of bringing self into the…

The General Medical Council in the UK recommends that undergraduate medical students be exposed to a variety of learning opportunities and increasingly take responsibility for their own learning. This study presents quantitative and qualitative data relating to attendance at non-compulsory plenary lectures in order to understand factors affecting…

The innovative practical course was developed to improve the students' ability to acquire pharmaceutical care skills. The primary components of the course were in-school training using small group discussions and hospital experience including identification, analysis, prevention and resolution of drug-therapy problems, patient counseling on their…

Ranked purely on the basis of the available reliable and valid measures, the demographic composition of incoming medical students fails to meet societal concerns regarding under-represented minorities (URM). Admissions offices are squeezed, administratively and legally, between honouring objectively measured individual merit and addressing…

Context: In-training assessment (ITA), defined as multiple assessments of performance in the setting of day-to-day practice, is an invaluable tool in assessment programmes which aim to assess professional competence in a comprehensive and valid way. Research on clinical performance ratings, however, consistently shows weaknesses concerning…

Context: Evolution from novice to expert is associated with the development of expert-type knowledge structure. The objectives of this study were to examine reliability and validity of concept sorting (ConSort[C]) as a measure of static knowledge structure and to determine the relationship between concepts in static knowledge structure and…

Medical school is an academic and developmental path toward a professional life demanding self-regulation and self-education. Thus, many medical schools include in their goals for medical student education their graduates' ability to self-assess and self-regulate their education upon graduation and throughout their professional lives. This study…

Background: Before the 1970s, research into the development of clinical competence was mainly focused on general problem-solving abilities. The scope of research changed when Elstein and colleagues discovered that individual ability to solve clinical problems varies considerably across cases. It was concluded that problem solving abilities are…

The academic performance consequences of relying solely on non-cognitive factors for selecting applicants above a GPA and MCAT threshold have not been fully considered in the literature. This commentary considers the impact of using a "threshold approach" on academic performance as assessed with the USMLE Step 1.