The validity of abdominal examination in blunt trauma patients with distracting injuries.

Background: Many trauma care providers often disregard the abdominal clinical examination in the presence of extra-abdominal distracting injuries and mandate abdominal computed tomographic scan in these patients. Ignoring the clinical examination may incur undue expense and radiation exposure. The purpose of this study was to assess the efficacy of abdominal clinical examination in patients with distracting injuries.

Implementing achievable benchmarks in preventive health: a controlled trial in residency education.

Purpose: To evaluate the Preventive Health Achievable Benchmarks Curriculum, a multifaceted improvement intervention that included an objective, practice-based performance evaluation of internal medicine and pediatric residents' delivery of preventive services.

Method: The authors conducted a nonrandomized experiment of intervention versus control group residents with baseline and follow-up of performance audited for 2001-2004. All 130 internal medicine and 78 pediatric residents at two continuity clinics at the University of Alabama School of Medicine, Birmingham, participated.