Postgraduate medical journal
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Multicenter Study
Improving medical students' written communication skills: design and evaluation of an educational curriculum.
Written and verbal communication skills are important skills for all physicians. While verbal skills are taught and assessed in medical school, medical students report limited instruction in written communication skills. This study examined the impact of a curriculum delivered during a 6-week clinical rotation in Internal Medicine on the objective assessment of medical students' written communication skills. ⋯ The combination of a resident feedback workshop with medical student written communication tutorial improves objective evaluations of consultation note scores over student tutorial alone.
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Multicenter Study
General practitioners' attitude to sport and exercise medicine services: a questionnaire-based survey.
Sport and exercise medicine (SEM) aims to manage sporting injuries and promote physical activity. This study explores general practitioners' (GPs) awareness, understanding and utilisation of their local SEM services. ⋯ There is a lack of awareness and understanding among GPs on the role of SEM within the National Health Service which may be resulting in suboptimal utilisation especially for patients who could benefit from increasing their activity levels.
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
Multicentre study of investigation and management of inpatient hyponatraemia in the UK.
Hyponatraemia is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the investigation and management of hyponatraemia and to assess the use of different therapeutic modalities and their effectiveness in routine practice. ⋯ Underinvestigation and undertreatment of hyponatraemia is a common occurrence in UK clinical practice. Therefore, development of UK guidelines and introduction of electronic alerts for hyponatraemia should be considered to improve clinical practice.
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Multicenter Study
Factors that trigger emergency physicians to contact a poison centre: findings from a Swiss study.
Poison centres offer rapid and comprehensive support for emergency physicians managing poisoned patients. This study investigates institutional, case-specific and poisoning-specific factors which influence the decision of emergency physicians to contact a poison centre. ⋯ We found low rates of poison centre consultation by emergency physicians. It appears that intensive care unit admission and other factors reflecting either complexity or uncertainty of the clinical situation are the strongest predictors for poison centre consultation. Hospital size did not influence referral behaviour.
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Emergency physician recognition of delirium.
To compare the recognition of delirium by emergency physicians based on observations made during routine clinical care with concurrent ratings made by a trained researcher after formal cognitive assessment and to examine each of the four individual features of delirium separately to determine the variation in identification across features. ⋯ When emergency physicians use routine clinical observations, they may miss diagnosing up to two-thirds of patients with delirium. Recognition of delirium can be enhanced with standardised cognitive testing.