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The practice of medicine is rapidly evolving, and will undoubtedly change in multiple ways over the career of a physician. By emphasizing personal responsibility, professionalism, and thinking skills over content transfer, the authors believe this curriculum will prepare students not only for the first day of practice but also for an uncertain future in the biological sciences, health and disease, and the nation's health care system, which they will encounter in the decades to come.Several schools have moved the United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 1 exam after core clerkships and others are considering this change. Delaying Step 1 may improve Step 1 performance and lower Step 1 failure rates. Schools considering moving Step 1 are particularly concerned about late identification of struggling students and late Step failures, which can be particularly problematic due to reduced time to remediate and accumulated debt if remediation is ultimately unsuccessful. In the literature published to date, little attention has been given to these students. In this article, authors from 9 medical schools with a postclerkship Step 1 exam share their experiences. The authors describe curricular policies, early warning and identification strategies, and interventions to enhance success for all students and struggling students in particular. Such learners can be identified by understanding challenges that place them "at risk" and by tracking performance outcomes, particularly on other standardized assessments. All learners can benefit from early coaching and advising, mechanisms to ensure early feedback on performance, commercial study tools, learning specialists or resources to enhance learning skills, and wellness programs. Some students may need intensive tutoring, neuropsychological testing and exam accommodations, board preparation courses, deceleration pathways, and options to postpone Step 1. In rare instances, a student may need a compassionate off-ramp from medical school. With the National Board of Medical Examiner's announcement that Step 1 scoring will change to pass/fail as early as January 2022, residency program directors might use failing Step 1 scores to screen out candidates. Institutions altering the timing of Step 1 can benefit from practical guidance by those who have made the change, to both prevent Step 1 failures and minimize adverse effects on those who fail.The medical education community acknowledges the importance of including the humanities in general, and the liberal arts in particular, in the education of health professionals. Among the liberal arts, theater is especially helpful for educators wanting to bring experiences that are both real and challenging to the learning encounter in an interactive, engaging, and reflective way. In this Perspective, the authors share what they have learned after working together with a company of actors for 8 years (2012-2019) in different obligatory and elective curricular activities. Influenced by Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and the ideas of Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, Medical Education Empowered by Theater (MEET) embraces social accountability and applies the concept of sensible cognition to empower medical students as the protagonists of their learning and professional development to become agents of change-both in patients' lives and in health care systems. The MEET theoretical framework builds on the concepts of liberation, emancipatory education, critical pedagogy, and participatory theater to offer medical students and teachers an opportunity to problematize, criticize, and hopefully reform the hierarchical and often oppressive structures of medical education and practice. MEET sessions include activating previous knowledge and experiences, warm-up exercises, different improvisational exercises, debriefing, and synthesis. Vital to the praxis of MEET is applying theater-teaching traditions to develop capacities important in medicine presence, empathy, improvisation, communication (verbal and non-verbal), and scenic intelligence (i.e., the capacity to self-assess one's performance while performing). The authors believe that theater offers a venue to integrate both the personal and professional development of students into a process of reflection and action, targeting the transformation of the medical culture towards social justice.PURPOSE Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (ZPD) refers to the space between what learners have mastered and what they should master in the next developmental stage. Physicians' tasks are ZPD activities for medical students, with high-acuity tasks such as resuscitation representing activities at the ZPD's frontier. This type of task can be taught and assessed with simulation but may be demanding and stressful for students. Highly challenging simulation may lead to negative simulated patient outcome and can affect the participant's emotional state, learning, and motivation. This study aimed to increase understanding of the psychosocial and educational impact of simulation at the frontier of the ZPD. METHOD The authors conducted 11 phenomenological interviews between September 2016 and May 2017, to describe medical students' experiences with a challenging residency-level simulation test of acute care competence at the start of the final undergraduate year at University Medical Center Utrecht. Interviews took place within 2 weeks after the participants' simulation experience. The authors analyzed transcripts using a modified Van Kaam method. RESULTS Students experienced a significant amount of stress fueled by uncertainty about medical management, deterioration of critically ill simulated patients, and disappointment about their performance. Stress manifested mainly mentally, impeding cognitive function. Students reported that awareness of the practice setting, anticipation of poor performance, the debriefing, a safe environment, and the prospect of training opportunities regulated their emotional responses to stress. These stress-regulating factors turned stressful simulation into a motivating educational experience. CONCLUSIONS Simulation at the ZPD's frontier evoked stress and generated negative emotions. However, stress-regulating factors transformed this activity into a positive and motivating experience.Medical schools and other higher education institutions across the United States are grappling with how to respond to racism on and off campus. Institutions and their faculty, administrators, and staff have examined their policies and practices, missions, curricula, and the representation of racial and ethnic minority groups among faculty, staff, and students. In addition, student-led groups, such as White Coats for Black Lives, have emerged to critically evaluate medical school curricula and advocate for change. Another approach to addressing racism has been a focus on the role of professionalism, which has been variably defined as values, traits, behaviors, morality, humanism, a role, an identity, and even a social contract.In this article, the authors consider the potential role that professionalism might play in responding to racism in medical education and at medical schools. They identify 3 concerns central to this idea. The first concern is differing definitions of what the problem being addressed really is. Is it isolated racist acts or institutional racism that is a reflection of white supremacy? The second concern is the notion that professionalism may be used as a tool of social control to maintain the interests of the social groups that dominate medicine. The third concern is that an overly simplistic application of professionalism, regardless of how the problem of racism is defined, may result in trainees practicing professionalism that is performative rather than internally motivated. The authors conclude that professionalism may complement a more systematic and holistic approach to addressing racism and white supremacy in medical education, but it is an insufficient standalone tool to address this core problem.There has been a recent rise in calls for action around wellness and physician health. In medical education, wellness has been proposed as a physician competency. In this article, the authors review the history of the "wellness as a competency" concept within U.S. and Canadian residency programs and medical schools. Drawing from literature on the discourses of wellness and competence in medical education, they argue that operationalizing wellness as a physician competency holds profound implications for curricula, admissions, evaluation, and licensure. While many definitions of "wellness" and "competency" are used within medical training environments, the authors argue that the definitions institutions ultimately use will have significant impacts for trainees who are considered "unwell." In particular, medical learners with disabilities--including those with mental health, chronic health, learning, sensory, and mobility disabilities--may not conform to dominant conceptions of "wellness," and there is a risk they will become further stigmatized or even be considered unsuitable to practice in the profession. The authors conclude that framing wellness as a competency has the potential to legitimize support-seeking and prioritize physician health, yet it may also have the potential unintended effect of excluding certain learners from the profession. They propose a universal design approach to understand wellness at a systems level and to remove barriers to wellness for all medical learners.PURPOSE To determine the association of Fitzpatrick skin type (FST) with conjunctival melanoma. METHODS Retrospective case series of 540 patients with conjunctival melanoma to assess clinical features and outcomes per FST. RESULTS The FST was Type I (n = 126, 23%), II (n = 337, 62%), III (n = 56, 10%), IV (n = 8, 2%), V (n = 12, 2%), and VI (n = 1, less then 1%). A comparison (FST I vs. II vs. III, IV, V, and VI) revealed Types I and II associated with older mean patient age (63.9 vs. 60.7 vs. 51.1 years, p less then 0.001), greater percentage of female patients (68% vs. 44% vs. 42%, p less then 0.001), lower frequency of complexion associated melanosis (1% vs. 2% vs. 13%, p less then 0.001), smaller tumor thickness (2.1 vs. 2.8 vs. 3.6 mm, p = 0.01), and less eyelid involvement (13% vs. 13% vs. 28%, p = 0.02). Kaplan-Meier estimates for 5-year risk showed no difference by Types for visual acuity loss ≥3 lines, local tumor recurrence, exenteration, metastasis, or death. A review of 540 patients with conjunctival melanoma based on Fitzpatrick skin type (FST) revealed Type I (n = 126, 23%), Type II (n = 337, 62%), Type III (n = 56, 10%), Type IV (n = 8, 2%), Type V (n = 12, 2%), and Type VI (n = 1, less then 1%). The FST grading did not impact 5-year outcomes of tumor recurrence, exenteration, metastasis, or death. CONCLUSION AND RELEVANCE Most patients with conjunctival melanoma show FST I or II, and this demonstrated no association with 5-year rate of vision loss, tumor recurrence, exenteration, metastasis, or death.PURPOSE To test whether intraoperative stereotactic navigation during orbital decompression surgery resulted in quantifiable surgical benefit. METHODS This retrospective cohort study examined all consecutive patients who underwent primary orbital decompression surgery for thyroid associated orbitopathy performed by a single surgeon (A.K.) during the periods of 2012-2014 (non-navigated), and 2017-2018 (navigated). The study was HIPAA-compliant, was approved by the Institutional Review Board, and adhered to the tenets of the Helsinki declaration. Recorded parameters included patient age, sex, race, decompression technique (side of operation and walls decompressed), estimated blood loss (EBL), intraoperative complications, times that patient entered and exited the operating room (OR), times of surgical incision and dressing completion, pre- and postoperative best corrected visual acuity (BCVA), proptosis, diplopia, postoperative change in strabismus deviation, and need for subsequent strabismus surgery. Recorded times were used to calculate operating time (initial incision to dressing) and maintenance time (time between OR entry and initial incision and time between dressings and OR exit).
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