Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges
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To evaluate interns' perceived preparedness for defined surgical residency responsibilities and to determine whether fourth-year medical school (M4) preparatory courses ("bootcamps") facilitate transition to internship. ⋯ Entering surgical residency, interns report not feeling prepared to fulfill common clinical and professional responsibilities. As M4 curricula may enhance preparation, programs facilitating transition to residency should be developed and evaluated.
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Residency programs around the world use multisource feedback (MSF) to evaluate learners' performance. Studies of the reliability of MSF show mixed results. This study aimed to identify the reliability of MSF as practiced across occasions with varying numbers of assessors from different professional groups (physicians and nonphysicians) and the effect on the reliability of the assessment for different competencies when completed by both groups. ⋯ A feasible number of assessors per MSF occasion can reliably assess residents' performance. Scores from a single occasion should be interpreted cautiously. However, every occasion can provide valuable feedback for learning. This research confirms that the (unique) characteristics of different assessor groups should be considered when interpreting MSF results. Reliability seems to be influenced by the included assessor groups and competencies. These findings will enhance the utility of MSF during residency training.
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To identify and examine the characteristics of the 50 top-cited articles in medical education. ⋯ The finding that over half of List B articles were published in nonmedical education journals is consistent with medical education's integrated nature and subspecialty breadth. Twenty of these articles were among their respective non-medical-education journals' 50 top-cited papers, showing that medical education articles can compete with subject-based articles.
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Use of social networking programs like Facebook and Twitter, which enable the public sharing of diverse content over the Internet, has risen dramatically in recent years. Although health professionals have faced consequences for clearly unethical online behavior, a relatively unexamined practice among medical students is the disclosure of patient care stories on social media in a manner that is technically compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, yet is ethically questionable. ⋯ Consequences include the possibility of undermining public trust in the profession, inadvertently identifying patients, and violating expectations of privacy. The authors recommend that medical schools explicitly address these issues across the preclinical and clinical curricula and emphasize that patient-related postings on social media may carry inherent risks both to patients and to the profession.
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To compare procedure-specific checklists and a global rating scale in assessing technical competence. ⋯ Assessment using a global rating scale may be superior to assessment using a checklist for evaluation of technical competence. Traditional standard-setting methods may establish checklist cut scores with too-low specificity: High checklist scores did not rule out incompetence. The role of clinically significant errors in determining procedural competence should be further evaluated.