Working in the dead of night: exploring the transition to after-hours duty.

Context: Transitions, although often difficult, represent integral components of medical training. New postgraduate trainees (first-year residents) find themselves in an especially challenging transition as they are expected to fulfil both learning and service expectations concurrently. Workplace learning theory has been suggested as a lens through which to understand this unique educational, yet service-oriented, role.

Diagnosing technical competence in six bedside procedures: comparing checklists and a global rating scale in the assessment of resident performance.

Purpose: To compare procedure-specific checklists and a global rating scale in assessing technical competence.

Method: Two trained raters used procedure-specific checklists and a global rating scale to independently evaluate 218 video-recorded performances of six bedside procedures of varying complexity for technical competence. The procedures were completed by 47 residents participating in a formative simulation-based objective structured clinical examination at the University of Calgary in 2011.

Expression profiles of mRNA transcript variants encoding the human inhibitor of growth tumor suppressor gene family in normal and neoplastic tissues.

The INhibitor of Growth (ING) tumor suppressor gene family is important in regulating cell fate and reads the epigenetic code by interacting specifically with methylated histone H3. Several transcript variants are expressed from the five ING genes but nomenclature for these variants are not consistent in the literature, and very little is known regarding transcript variant expression in normal human tissues and during development. Here we propose a standardized nomenclature for human ING gene family transcript variants and present an expression analysis using real-time quantitative PCR.