Relating mentor type and mentoring behaviors to academic medicine faculty satisfaction and productivity at one medical school.

Purpose: To examine relationships among having formal and informal mentors, mentoring behaviors, and satisfaction and productivity for academic medicine faculty.

Method: In 2005, the authors surveyed full-time faculty at the University of Minnesota Medical School to assess their perceptions of variables associated with job satisfaction and productivity. This analysis focused on perceptions of mentoring as related to satisfaction with current position and productivity (articles published in peer-reviewed journals [article production] and role as a primary investigator [PI] or a co-PI on a grant/contract).

Long-term care benefits may reduce end-of-life medical care costs.

Abstract This study explores whether personal care services for functionally dependent or cognitively impaired individuals paid for by a long-term care (LTC) insurance policy can reduce health care utilization and costs at the end of life. This retrospective study uses propensity score matching methodology, hierarchical multiple regression, and Poisson regression to compare 830 decedents who utilized benefits from a voluntary LTC insurance plan ("claimants") to 6860 decedents who never purchased coverage but were similar to claimants on 17 variables, including age, sex, frailty, burden of illness markers, and propensity to have needed LTC services. Claimants using LTC benefits experienced significantly lower health care costs at end of life, including 14% lower total medical costs, 13% lower pharmacy costs, 35% lower inpatient admission costs, and 16% lower outpatient visit costs.

An adaptive approach to facilitating research productivity in a primary care clinical department.

Efforts to foster the growth of a department's or school's research mission can be informed by known correlates of research productivity, but the specific strategies to be adopted will be highly context-dependent, influenced by local, national, and discipline-specific needs and resources. The authors describe a multifaceted approach-informed by a working model of organizational research productivity-by which the University of Minnesota Department of Family Medicine and Community Health (Twin Cities campus) successfully increased its collective research productivity during a 10-year period (1997-2007) and maintained these increases over time.Facing barriers to recruitment of faculty investigators, the department focused instead on nurturing high-potential investigators among their current faculty via a new, centrally coordinated research program, with provision of training, protected time, technical resources, mentoring, and a scholarly culture to support faculty research productivity.

A randomized trial of a pay-for-performance program targeting clinician referral to a state tobacco quitline.

Background: Tobacco quitlines offer clinicians a means to connect their patients with evidence-based treatments. Innovative methods are needed to increase clinician referral.

Methods: This is a clinic randomized trial that compared usual care (n = 25 clinics) vs a pay-for-performance program (intervention) offering $5000 for 50 quitline referrals (n = 24 clinics).

Temporal artery temperature measurements do not detect hyperthermic marathon runners.

Introduction: Exertional heat stroke is a cause of collapse in marathon runners. Rectal temperature (T(rectal)) measurement is the usual method of estimating core temperature in collapsed runners, and temporal artery thermometer (TAT) measurement is untested for field use in marathon runners and other athletes. The objective of this study is to compare TAT measurement with T(rectal) measurement in collapsed marathon runners.

The compulsive sexual behavior inventory: psychometric properties.

Compulsive sexual behavior (CSB) is a putative clinical syndrome characterized by the experience of sexual urges, sexually arousing fantasies, and sexual behaviors that are recurrent, intense, and a distressful interference in one's daily life. Although the putative phenomenology of CSB has been described in the literature, the lack of a reliable, valid assessment tool has made investigation of prevalence, co-factors, and etiologic factors difficult. This study examined the further development of the Compulsive Sexual Behavior Inventory (CSBI) using a sample of 1,026 Latino men who have sex with men recruited and assessed using web-based technology.

A validated tool for gaining insight into clinicians' preventive medicine behaviors and beliefs: the preventive medicine attitudes and activities questionnaire (PMAAQ).

Objective: This article describes the development, reliability, and validity of the Preventive Medicine Attitudes and Activities Questionnaire (PMAAQ).

Method: From 1995 to 2003, the PMAAQ was administered to 353 residents at six primary care residency programs in the United States. Validity was demonstrated in four ways: content validity through an expert panel, calculation of internal consistency reliabilities, demonstration of divergent validity, and external validation using a pre-existent chart review dataset.

Examining the medical student body: peer physical exams and genital, rectal, or breast exams.

Background: Some medical schools have replaced all student practice peer physical examinations in the curriculum with examinations of standardized patients (SPs).

Purpose: To assess attitudes of medical students toward practicing physical examinations with classmates, including genital, rectal, or female breast components.

Methods: Survey administered to all 235 Year-4 students at University of Minnesota Medical School (69% response rate).

Pedometers as a means to increase ambulatory activity for patients seen at a family medicine clinic.

Because of their frequent encounters with sedentary patients, family physicians are poised to be on the forefront of the medical community's response to physical inactivity. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine whether the addition of a pedometer to brief physician counseling could help patients increase their ambulatory activity. Ninety four participants recruited from a family medicine clinic were randomly assigned to 2 groups.

Group visits for Hmong adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus: a pre-post analysis.

Hmong refugees with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM2) have poor glycemic control. For Hmong adults with DM2, group visits were instituted at a community health center and evaluated for their influence on diabetes management. Pre- and postintervention measures of physical health, mental health, and behavior were collected on 39 participants (64% participation rate).

The relationship of postpartum partner satisfaction to parents' work, health, and social characteristics.

This prospective study was conducted to identify work, health, and social predictors of partner satisfaction at 6 months postpartum. Surveys were completed by 261 expectant fathers and mothers (128 couples) during pregnancy and at 6-months postpartum. Both fathers and mothers experienced significant postpartum declines in partner satisfaction and caring.

A theoretical, practical, predictive model of faculty and department research productivity.

Purpose: Although numerous characteristics impact faculty research productivity, and although researchers have suggested comprehensive theoretical models to explain the relationship between these characteristics and levels of faculty research productivity, few studies have assessed these models. This study tests the ability of the Bland et al. (2002) model-based on individual, institutional, and leadership variables influencing faculty research productivity-to explain individual and group (department) research productivity within the context of a large medical school.

Demonstration of the effectiveness and acceptability of self-study module use in residency education.

Educators face increasing challenges to promote lifelong learning skills, to include new content areas in an already full curriculum and to maximize limited resources for curriculum implementation. Self-study modules (hereafter modules) offer potential solutions. Three modules on preventive medicine topics were evaluated in Family Medicine residencies.

First-time parents' prenatal to postpartum changes in health, and the relation of postpartum health to work and partner characteristics.

Background: The purpose of this study was to evaluate prenatal to postnatal changes in first-time parents' physical and mental health, and to describe social and health predictors of parents' postpartum health.

Methods: This prospective study surveyed 261 expectant fathers and mothers during pregnancy and again at 6 months' postpartum regarding their health, partner, and work characteristics. Postpartum changes in health were evaluated by paired t tests, and predictors of postpartum health were determined using multiple regression analyses.

A pilot, open clinical study of depakote in the treatment of cocaine abuse.

The effectiveness of increasing levels of valproic acid on cocaine abstinence was evaluated in an open-label trial of 55 subjects. Significantly lower percentages of individuals with valproate serum levels above 50 mcg/ml reported cocaine use and had less positive urinalyses as compared to those with serum levels less than 50 mcg/ml. The total number of days of cocaine use decreased significantly (p < 0.