Advances in medical education and practice
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Quality improvement and patient safety (QIPS) are a global health priority. Accordingly, QIPS education in medical education became mandatory. Despite that, information about QIPS education in postgraduate training in Saudi Arabia is limited. This study aimed to explore the educational aspects of QIPS in the internal medicine residency training program at King Abdulaziz Hospital in Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia. ⋯ This study highlighted the awareness of internal medicine residents of the QIPS concept, importance, and value of QIPS education. However, we found crucial gaps related to education including lack of a dedicated QIPS component under the training program. There is a need for multicenter studies to measure the magnitude of our findings for improvement of QIPS education in residency training in Saudi Arabia. This is the first study about QIPS education in residency training in Saudi Arabia up to our best knowledge.
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An in-situ simulation model with a simulated patient environment is a training tool that was implemented for the front-line workers managing COVID-19 respiratory infection outbreak in a hospital of National Importance, situated in southern part of India. The objective of this training tool was to improve the preparedness of health care workers and the control measures to manage any respiratory infection outbreaks. Also, to provide good patient care and patient safety during the sudden outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen causing pandemic respiratory infection outbreak worldwide. ⋯ The training method was the simulation of management of pandemic respiratory infection outbreaks in the most realistic manner possible to test or evaluate the capability of more than one function in the context of an emergency event. An in-situ simulation is an effective method that is close to real-life scenario, to measure the readiness and effectiveness of an emergency response plan. Hence, it is a useful tool to assess disaster preparedness against any type of outbreak.
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Understanding the trend of student authorship is crucial in determining its correlation to scholarly impact for corresponding authors. Our objective is to investigate student authorship rates over time in articles published in JAMA Internal Medicine (IM), as well as to examine potential effects student authors have on scholarly impact scores of corresponding authors via H-index measures. ⋯ Student participation in research is not a disadvantage to scholarly impact for corresponding authors. Increased student authorship reflects a promising trend towards greater student participation in research within the field of medicine.
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Communication skills education is still relatively new in some non-Western countries. Further, most evaluation research on communication skills education examines only short-term results. In our communication skills program in Qatar, we aimed to: 1) assess the impact of the communication skills course on participant skills application; 2) assess the length of time since course completion associated with participant skills application; and 3) assess participant gender or clinical position associated with participant skills application. ⋯ Participants reported agreement with response items about the impact of the course on their skills application. Participant gender did not play a significant role, but residents had lower scores than did fellows. Furthermore, most physicians (92%) were able to name something specific that they had learned from the course and were currently implementing in their practice. Positive outcomes of the course did not seem to diminish over time. Future research should identify whether observable communication behavior matches the self-reported behavior.
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Currently, the COVID-19 pandemic has a critical impact on clinical education, and it has resulted in the widespread disruption of clinical assessment. Clinical mentors and students in all the health professions are working within the most troublesome of circumstances in the hospital-based educational settings. Medical educationists ought to concentrate on the health and the safety of the students and communities. ⋯ A key challenge for medical educators is to simulate the clinical encounters at this unprecedented time, and this emphasized the necessity of applying virtual simulation-based educational tools in clinical education. This commentary explores how COVID-19 has challenged medical education. It also has discussed the future implications and potencial challenges of incorporating simulation-based virtual learning technologies into the medical curriculum, for the future of clinical education, and students' or residents' competency evaluation.