Journal of general internal medicine
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Institutions rely on student evaluations of teaching (SET) to ascertain teaching quality. Manual review of narrative comments can identify faculty with teaching concerns but can be resource and time-intensive. ⋯ NLP methods can identify teaching quality concerns with good accuracy and reasonable recall, but relatively low precision. An existing, free, NLP sentiment analysis dictionary can perform nearly as well as dictionaries requiring expert coding or manual creation.
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Service-learning courses improve medical students' ability and willingness to participate in community engagement as future physicians. However, few studies examine the community partners' (CP) perceptions of the utility of these courses in accomplishing the goals of their organizations. ⋯ CPs acknowledged that this service-learning course provides collective benefit to students, community organizations, and community members. However, challenges such as navigating student schedules and understanding course expectations lead to additional work for CPs. Acting on suggestions for improvement will help secure this course's longevity and collective benefit to the community.
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Uncertainty is inherent in medicine, and trainees are particularly exposed to the adverse effects of uncertainty. Previous work suggested that junior residents seek to leverage the support of supervisors to regulate the uncertainty encountered in clinical placements. However, a broader conceptual framework addressing uncertainty experience, from the sources of uncertainty to residents' responses, is still needed. ⋯ Residents face significant uncertainty in managing treatments, ethical decisions, and communication due to limited clinical experience and growing responsibilities. Scaffolding their responsibilities and clearly defining their roles can improve their comfort with uncertainty. To that extent, effective supervision and debriefing are crucial for managing emotional impacts and fostering reflection to learn from their uncertain experiences.
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Internal medicine residents care for clinically complex older adults and may experience increased moral distress due to knowledge gaps, time constraints, and institutional barriers. We conducted a phenomenological study to explore residents' experiences and challenges through the lens of uncertainty. ⋯ Internal medicine residents face uncertainty when caring for older adults, particularly related to technical and conceptual factors. Strategies for mitigating uncertainty in the care of older adults are needed given links with moral distress and trainee well-being.
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Although internal medicine (IM) physicians accept public advocacy as a professional responsibility, there is little evidence that IM training programs teach advocacy skills. The prevalence and characteristics of public advocacy curricula in US IM residency programs are unknown. ⋯ Over half of US IM residency programs offer no formal training in public advocacy skills and many reported lack of faculty expertise in public advocacy as a barrier. These findings suggest many IM residents are not taught how to advocate for communities and populations. Further, less than one-quarter of required curricula in public advocacy involves experiential learning.