CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Educating physicians to reduce benzodiazepine use by elderly patients: a randomized controlled trial.
Benzodiazepine use by elderly patients is associated with adverse outcomes including increased risk of falls and fractures, motor vehicle accidents and cognitive impairment. Recent studies suggest that individualized feedback and education to physicians may improve drug prescribing. In this study, we evaluated an intervention to address the inappropriate prescribing of benzodiazepines for elderly patients. ⋯ We did not find that a program of confidential feedback and educational material offered to Ontario primary care physicians had a clinically significant impact on their benzodiazepine prescribing.
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The requirements of professionalism and the expected qualities of medical staff, including high moral character, motivate institutions to care about the ethical development of students during their medical education. We assessed progress in moral reasoning in a cohort of medical students over the first 3 years of their education. ⋯ Temporal variations in students' scores show a levelling process of their moral reasoning. This finding prompts us to ask whether a hidden curriculum exists in the structure of medical education that inhibits rather than facilitates the development of moral reasoning.