Medical teacher
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Medical educators are increasingly faced with directives to teach Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) skills. Because of its nature, integrating fundamental EBM educational content is a challenge in the preclinical years. ⋯ This study provides evidence that the integration of an educational EBM search tool can be positively received by preclinical medical students.
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The use of an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) has been a powerful influence on doctor training but assessments do not always drive study behaviour in predictable ways. ⋯ The expectation that an OSCE drives learning into the clinical workplace was not supported by this study. This suggests the role of clinical experience in helping students prepare for the exam may be more subliminal, or that an OSCE is more as a test of psychomotor skills than a marker of clinical experience. An unexpected benefit may be to drive more collaborative learning.
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Medical boards around the world face the challenge of creating competency-based postgraduate training programs. Recent legislation requires that all postgraduate medical training programmes in The Netherlands be reformed. In this article the Dutch Advisory Board for Postgraduate Curriculum Development shares some of their experiences with guiding the design of specialist training programs, based on the Canadian Medical Educational Directives for Specialists (CanMEDS). ⋯ Finally, for each task an assessment method is chosen to focus on a limited number of CanMEDS roles. This leads to a three step training cycle: (i) based on their in-training assessment and practices, trainees will gather evidence on their development in a portfolio; (ii) this evidence stimulates the trainee and the supervisor to regularly reflect on a trainee's global development regarding the CanMEDS roles as well as on the performance in specific tasks; (iii) a personal development plan structures future learning goals and strategies. The experiences in the Netherlands are in line with international developments in postgraduate medical education and with the literature on workplace-based teaching and learning.
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PowerPoint is an application designed to help the speaker or lecturer assemble professional looking slides to be used in oral presentations. The result sadly is often an unending stream of slides with bullet lists, animations that obscure rather than clarify the point and cartoons that distract from rather than convey the message. ⋯ For most speakers, however, the problem is not with PowerPoint but with how they make use of it. Three approaches to making presentations using PowerPoint are described which should yield rich rewards and a more attentive and appreciative audience.
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The mini-clinical evaluation exercise (mini-CEX) is a 30 minute observed clinical encounter which allows assessment of a resident's clinical competence with feedback on their performance. ⋯ Residents' perceptions of the mini-CEX reflected a tension between the tool's dual roles of assessment and education.