To the Editor: We agree with the Perspective article by Lehman and Guercio (March 7 issue)1 that national clinical exams are expensive. We also agree with First et al.2 that such exams positively shape the educational and assessment programs of medical schools, promote standardization of accreditation criteria, and provide an essential service to the public by filtering out candidates in need o...

BACKGROUND Observation of performance followed by feedback is the key to good teaching of communication skills in clinical practice. The fact that it occurs rarely is probably due to clinical supervisors' perceived lack of competence to identify communication skills and give effective feedback. We evaluated the impact of a faculty development programme on communication skills teaching on clinic...

BACKGROUND Students may encounter difficulties when they have to apply clinical skills trained in their pre-clinical studies in clerkships. Early clinical exposure in the pre-clinical phase has been recommended to reduce these transition problems. The aim of this study is to explore differences in students' experiences during the first clerkships between students exclusively trained in a skills...

Clinical reasoning is a core competency expected to be acquired by all clinicians. It is the ability to integrate and apply different types of knowledge, weigh evidence critically and reflect upon the process used to arrive at a diagnosis. Problems with clinical reasoning often occur because of inadequate knowledge, flaws in data gathering and improper approach to information processing. Some o...

Virtual humans offer an exciting and powerful potential for rich interactive experiences. Fully embodied virtual humans are growing in capability, ease, and utility. As a result, they present an opportunity for expanding research into burgeoning virtual patient medical applications. In this paper we consider the ways in which one may go about building and applying virtual human technology to th...

Despite advances in “technological” medicine, the history and physical examination still provide the definitive diagnosis in most cases (1, 2) and remain the cornerstone of clinical medicine (3). Medical students spend a great deal of time learning these techniques. Students continue to be taught the long-case “complete history and physical,” despite its inefficiency and errors. Bordage (4) cla...