For graduate medical education trainees, as well as contemporary practitioners, developing skills in recognizing compassion fatigue and practising self-care is vital to professional sustainability. The field of palliative medicine is no exception. In our fellowship programme, we use John Stone's poem, 'Talking to the Family,' to engage trainees in a professional development workshop on personal...

CONTEXT A postgraduate and resident trainee mental health assistance center was created in September 1996 within our university. OBJECTIVE To describe the clinical and demographic profile of its users. TYPE OF STUDY Retrospective. SETTING Universidade Federal de São Paulo--Escola Paulista de Medicina (Unifesp-EPM). METHODS The study was carried between September 1996 and November 2002, ...

AIM Clinical supervisors are appointed to ensure that medical trainees receive a satisfactory education, improve their academic orientation and develop professional attitudes. The aim of this study was to find out, from the paediatric trainee's perspective, how their clinical supervisor could best do that. METHODS We conducted in-depth interviews with seven paediatric trainees in a university...

BACKGROUND The variety of health problems (patient mix) that medical trainees encounter is presumed to be sufficient to master the required competencies. AIM To describe the patient mix of GP trainees, to study differences in patient mix between first-year and third-year GP trainees, and to investigate differences in exposure to sex-specific diseases between male and female trainees. DESIGN...

Background: Asthma treatment in Germany does not always comply with German treatment guidelines (AG) even though great importance is attached to medical guidelines worldwide. Suboptimal asthma management can lead to poor health outcomes. Barriers to guideline implementation and adherence must therefore be identified and analyzed. As 90% of asthma patients initially contact the German health sys...

BACKGROUND During postgraduate training, general practitioners and other specialists must learn how to deliver shared care to patients; however, the development of formal intraprofessional education is often hampered by curricular constraints. Delivering shared care in everyday work provides trainees with opportunities for informal learning from, about and with one another. METHODS Twelve sem...

BACKGROUND Despite wide recognition that the delivery of medical care by trainees involves special risks, information about the types and causes of medical errors involving trainees is limited. To describe the characteristics of and factors contributing to trainee errors, we analyzed malpractice claims in which trainees were judged to have played an important role in harmful errors. METHODS T...

In an academic medical centre between 1980 and 1985, the attitudes, preferences and career goals of house officers in a primary medical care residency training programme were assessed at entry and at the end of each house officer year. Primary care trainees who went on to practise in a general medicine setting were compared to primary care trainees who subsequently received subspecialty trainin...

BACKGROUND Direct observation of medical trainees by their supervisors with actual patients is essential for trainees to develop clinical skills competence. Despite the many available tools for direct observation of trainees by supervisors, it is unclear how educators should identify an appropriate tool for a particular clinical setting and implement the tool to maximize educational benefits fo...