Military medicine
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Impostor phenomenon (IP) is an experience where an individual believes that their success was because of chance or luck and was not associated with the mastery of skills. There is a gap in the literature in understanding what role, if any, onboarding (e.g., orientation weeks) into a military medical school plays into student experiences with IP. For many, onboarding serves as the first exposure to the climate, culture, and learning environment of both medical school and the military. Prevention, or early intervention, of IP may reduce potential effects on a medical trainee's confidence and competence in their profession, which may ultimately enhance health care team performance and impact patient outcomes. This study explores if and why military medical students experience IP during a 2-week-long orientation into a military medical school. ⋯ Our identified themes provide us with a better understanding of if and why military medical students experience IP during onboarding. Our findings are also consistent with the situated learning theory, which places emphasis on the sense of belonging and may provide a unique and insightful lens through which IP can be further explored and studied, particularly at a military medical school where various identities, dynamics, and aspirations can converge simultaneously. Additionally, our findings suggest that existing practices may benefit from a number of improvements including, but not limited to, tailoring onboarding activities to entail more reflective discussion using small groups, especially for topics related to diversity and inclusion, revisiting areas where students may feel inadequately prepared to transition and perform well in a medical school, reevaluating administrative and financial support that can be roadblocks to a student's transition into the new environment and removing these barriers, and ensuring cultural coherence (organizational alignment of vision and mission) among faculty, staff, and upperclassmen. Future research directions include better understanding how developing single or multiple, identities can impact a medical students' experience with IP during onboarding, pre-clerkship, clerkship, or post-clerkship period, if at all.
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Insulin-like growth factor type I (IGF-I) has gained considerable notoriety in military training, primarily because it is responsible for energy deficits and sensitive to an inadequate protein intake, which are situations that are commonly experienced in specific military operations. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the kinetics of IGF-I and insulin-like growth factor binding protein type 3 (IGFBP-3) in a 4-day military field training exercise. ⋯ It can be concluded that IGF-I and IGFBP-3 levels respond quickly to the stimuli caused by military training, especially after specific field training. However, the same markers quickly return to their basal values after this type of training finishes, simply by following the daily routine of the battalion in the control weeks, with no specific intervention being necessary.
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Although gender inequity persists globally in academic leadership positions, the United States Military has equitable pay and, in academic pediatrics, has equitable gender representation in leadership positions. To better understand how the US Military framework affects physician leaders, pediatricians were interviewed to illuminate the factors that facilitated their success and what barriers they faced in their career. ⋯ This study revealed that equitability for pediatric GME leadership in the military heavily relied on structures and support created by former leaders and mentors. Isolating these structures within a unique context of military academic medicine can illuminate physicians' experiences to address barriers and better support equitable leadership roles in both military and civilian academic medicine.
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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the resulting societal reaction presented new challenges to the medical community by limiting patient access to care in 2020 and 2021. The Navy Postgraduate Dental School (NPDS) oral and maxillofacial pathology biopsy service is dependent on in-office physician or dentist appointments and patient biopsies. The purpose of this study was to understand the regulatory and societal impacts of COVID-19 restrictions on biopsy service submissions by assessing NPDS biopsy submission quantities and disease distribution. ⋯ Overall, preventative COVID-19 health measures and protocols resulted in a reduction in biopsy submission frequency, particularly during the second quarter (April to June) of 2020. However, case counts for malignant biopsies remained consistent between pre-COVID and COVID time intervals, suggesting that the identification and analysis of cases requiring follow-on care were unaffected by COVID-19 protocols.
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With the evolution of educational tools, the French Military medical service has created a podcast program, Traum'Cast, about the principles of war medicine, accessible online for free. ⋯ This podcast is an innovative teaching tool which has proven to strengthen the knowledge of the principles of war medicine.