Assessment has always been an essential component of postgraduate medical education and for many years focused predominantly on various types of examinations. While examinations of medical knowledge and more recently of clinical skills with standardized patients can assess learner capability in controlled settings and provide a level of assurance for the public, persistent and growing concerns ...

Conferences are novel sites for understanding medical work. Through describing styles of presentation that take place at conferences attended by patients and parents, this article highlights how clinicians on stage present ordinary and extraordinary aspects of medicine. Attention is drawn to the reaction of the parents in the audience. The power of the presenter to direct proceedings highlights...

OBJECTIVES To compare 2005 health care resources among matched samples of employees with fibromyalgia (FM), osteoarthritis (OA), and controls. METHODS Using a claims database of privately insured individuals, FM and OA samples were derived from those with two or more disease-specific claims in 1999 to 2005 (> or =1 in 2002 to 2005). RESULTS Total costs for employees with FM ($10,199) approa...

BACKGROUND Work-related carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) now accounts for more than 41% of all repetitive motion disorders in the United States. Carpal tunnel syndrome is also associated with obesity and many different medical diseases. PATIENTS AND METHODS Two hundred ninety-seven patients medically certified with a work-related upper extremity industrial illness underwent a systematic search fo...

PARADIGMA (PARticipative Approach to DIsease Global Management) is a pilot project which aims to develop and demonstrate an Internet based reference framework to share scientific resources and findings in the treatment of major diseases. PARADIGMA defines and disseminates a common methodology and optimised protocols (Clinical Pathways) to support service functions directed to patients and indiv...

Introduction The emergency medicine (EM) clerkship curriculum at Los Angeles County + University of Southern California Medical Center includes monthly lectures on pediatric fever and shortness of breath (SOB). This educational innovation evaluated if learning could be enhanced by "priming" the students with educational online videos prior to an in-class session. Factors that impacted completio...

The attention of the social work profession has been dramatically directed to the challenges of practice in the health field: the former "medical social work," a demure adjunct to medicine, has been reborn as "social work in the health field." The more positive connotation of the word "health" leads to more stringent demands that the social worker function as a full member of the health team wi...

PARADIGMA (PARticipative Approach to DIsease Global Management) is a pilot project which aims are to define and to disseminate a common methodology and optimized protocols (Clinical Pathways) to support service functions directed to different stakeholders. PARADIGMA will provide a platform of information services user oriented and optimized against social, cultural and technological constraints...