For the past two decades, there have been calls for medical education to become more evidence-based. Whilst previous works have described how to use such methods, there are no works discussing when or why to select different methods from either a conceptual or pragmatic perspective. This question is not to suggest the superiority of such methods, but that having a clear rationale to underpin su...

A well designed outcomes research study was performed in which 20 primary care physicians were selected to participate. Each physician had more than 30 fibromyalgia patients in their practice. The study design consisted of four phases. In phase one, physicians undertook a self-assessment of their practice. Phase two of the study involved diagnosis and treatment of a virtual case vignette. The t...

BACKGROUND The internet has had a strong impact on how physicians access information and on the development of continuing medical education activities. Evaluation of the effectiveness of these activities has lagged behind their development. METHODS To determine the effectiveness of a group of 48 internet continuing medical education (CME) activities, case vignette surveys were administered to...

CONTEXT Recent specialty choices of graduating US medical students suggest that lifestyle may be an increasingly important factor in their career decision making. OBJECTIVE To determine whether and to what degree controllable lifestyle and other specialty-related characteristics are associated with recent (1996-2002) changes in the specialty preferences of US senior medical students. DESIGN...

Since the release of the Institute of Medicine's report on resident hours and patient safety, there have been calls for enhanced institutional oversight of duty hour limits and of efforts to enhance the quality and safety of care in teaching hospitals. The ACGME has established the Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER) program as a key component of the Next Accreditation System with the a...

This article describes the association between drug and alcohol use during sexual activity and high-risk sex for AIDS. Data to test this association are drawn from a prospective study of the behavioral changes made by gay men in San Francisco in response to the AIDS epidemic. Findings drawn from the May, 1984 and May 1985 waves of data collection are described. The cross-sectional analysis show...

Background: Nutrition education delivered by classroom teachers has become a popular intervention designed to combat childhood obesity. However, few qualitative studies have explored nutrition education with teachers Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore how elementary teachers describe their experience with nutrition education. Methods: A qualitative phenomenological approach was u...

Health practitioners work under fiduciary constraint, and are obligated to favour patient needs over all others and in particular their own. The principles of professionalism demand that professionals take great care to ensure that boundaries are maintained safely to provide an optimal setting in facilitating patient care. Boundary violations cause serious harm to the patient. Any romantic or s...

BACKGROUND Communication between physicians and patients is an important component of medical encounters and has been identified by the Institute of Medicine as a point of intervention to increase quality of care. In pediatric health maintenance visits, substantial recommended communication, in the form of anticipatory guidance, is not provided. OBJECTIVE To examine the effectiveness of an in...

INTRODUCTION We explored parents' views on the introduction of HE into the educational system, as well as differences in the degree of agreement, depending on the gender of the respondents, the school which the children attend and children's age. PATIENTS AND METHODS Examinees in this study were parents (N = 531) of children attending primary and secondary schools in the area of Municipality ...