The Journal of family practice
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The changes in family practice residency selection from 1978 to 1981 were studied by means of a questionnaire, and selection of family practice residency was identified by region. The relationship between the administrative status of family practice (department, division, or no formal unit) and selection of family practice residency was studied, and the opinions of medical school faculty respondents were sought concerning why interest in family practice has increased (or decreased) at their institution. ⋯ Schools with stronger institutional commitment to family practice, as evidenced by departmental status, have a higher percentage of graduates entering family practice. Respondents felt that the presence or absence of student contact with family practice was the most important reason for changes seen in residency choice.
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Although there is little evidence that evaluation actually helps improve teaching, some conditions increase the likelihood of evaluation leading to improvement, including a combination of student ratings with educational consultation, comparison of student ratings to self-ratings, feedback early enough to provide time for improvement, and linkage of faculty development to the promotion-retention-tenure process. These conditions were built into a family practice faculty development program. ⋯ The evaluator collected "laboratory" data regarding the instructor's teaching and made a "diagnosis." He provided "treatment" in terms of educational consultation and "assessed" the changes in the instructor's teaching. A repetition of the data collection and consultative process demonstrated improvement in clinical teaching, particularly with regard to the skill of leading a collaborative group discussion during resident teaching rounds.
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Coronary arterial spasm has been postulated to be a cause of myocardial ischemia for over 100 years. It was not until the work of Prinzmetal et al in 1959, however, that major clinical attention and research began to be addressed to the role of vasospasm in the manifestations of ischemic heart disease. ⋯ Symptomatic arrhythmias, including sinus bradycardia, heart block, and ventricular tachyarrhythmias, have been documented to complicate coronary vasospasm. Given the potential importance of coronary arterial spasm in so many different ischemic heart disease syndromes, the development of therapeutic agents that may prevent spasm has obvious clinical importance.