Impact of a Regional Grant Program Through the Lens of Social Cognitive Career Theory: A Mixed-Method Evaluation.

Purpose: Evaluations of educational grant programs have focused on research productivity, with few examining impacts on grantees or effective program characteristics. This evaluation examined the regional grant program sponsored by Group on Educational Affairs to examine if and how grantees' careers were affected by funding, and if these experiences aligned with program goals.

Method: In this concurrent, mixed-methods theory-driven evaluation, quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed independently and then integrated to examine complementarity.

Applying Conceptual and Theoretical Frameworks to Health Professions Education Research: An Introductory Workshop.

Introduction: Literature suggests that the quality and rigor of health professions education (HPE) research can be elevated if the research is anchored in existing theories and frameworks. This critical skill is difficult for novice researchers to master. We created a workshop to introduce the practical application of theories and frameworks to HPE research.

Challenges to assessing professional identity in medical students: a tale of two measures.

: Professional identity formation (PIF), a foundational process in becoming a physician, includes establishment of values, moral principles, and self-awareness. The purpose of this report is to examine challenges in establishing the validity of measures of identity fusion as one facet of PIF. : Utilizing the modern approach of validity as a unitary concept, the authors generated six hypotheses to examine the evidence for the construct validity of the scores of Physician Professional Identity (PPI) and Identity Integration (IdIn), considering relationships of these measures with each other, year of training and data from a larger survey.

An Interprofessional Standardized Patient Case for Improving Collaboration, Shared Accountability, and Respect in Team-Based Family Discussions.

Introduction: The science of patient safety demonstrates that good communication is essential for effective interprofessional collaboration.

Methods: We created a low-stakes, formative assessment with which medical students, pharmacy students, and nursing students could practice several of the Interprofessional Education Collaborative competencies. We aimed to enable students to practice collaborative care, respect for other disciplines, and shared accountability.

A Review of Continuous Quality Improvement Processes at Ten Medical Schools.

The Liaison Committee on Medical Education now expects all allopathic medical schools to develop and adhere to a documentable continuous quality improvement (CQI) process. Medical schools must consider how to establish a defensible process that monitors compliance with accreditation standards between site visits. The purpose of this descriptive study is to detail how ten schools in the Association of American Medical Colleges' (AAMC) Southern Group on Educational Affairs (SGEA) CQI Special Interest Group (SIG) are tackling practical issues of CQI development including establishing a CQI office, designating faculty and staff, charging a CQI committee, choosing software for data management, if schools are choosing formalized CQI models, and other considerations.

Using Jazz as a Metaphor to Teach Improvisational Communication Skills.

Metaphor helps humans understand complex concepts by "mapping" them onto accessible concepts. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of using jazz as a metaphor to teach senior medical students improvisational communication skills, and to understand student learning experiences. The authors designed a month-long course that used jazz to teach improvisational communication.

Patient Safety Interprofessional Training for Medical, Nursing, and Pharmacy Students.

Introduction: Patient safety education is required in medical, nursing, and pharmacy training, and interprofessional education offers an ideal format for teaching the core concepts of patient safety. This training activity was developed to fulfill interprofessional education core competencies for communication and teamwork and was nested within a required patient safety course taught at a medical school. However, the activity can easily be adapted as a stand-alone offering that can be included in a preclinical doctoring course, offered as an elective, or hosted at a college of nursing or pharmacy.

Near-peers improve patient safety training in the preclinical curriculum.

Background: Accrediting bodies require medical schools to teach patient safety and residents to develop teaching skills in patient safety. We created a patient safety course in the preclinical curriculum and used continuous quality improvement to make changes over time.

Objective: To assess the impact of resident teaching on student perceptions of a Patient Safety course.

A guiding framework to maximise the power of the arts in medical education: a systematic review and metasynthesis.

Context: A rich literature describes many innovative uses of the arts in professional education. However, arts-based teaching tends to be idiosyncratic, depending on the interests and enthusiasm of individual teachers, rather than on strategic design decisions. An overarching framework is needed to guide implementation of arts-based teaching in medical education.

Tools to Assess Behavioral and Social Science Competencies in Medical Education: A Systematic Review.

Purpose: Behavioral and social science (BSS) competencies are needed to provide quality health care, but psychometrically validated measures to assess these competencies are difficult to find. Moreover, they have not been mapped to existing frameworks, like those from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) and Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). This systematic review aimed to identify and evaluate the quality of assessment tools used to measure BSS competencies.

Measuring the quality of patients' goals and action plans: development and validation of a novel tool.

Background: The purpose of this study is to develop and test reliability, validity, and utility of the Goal-Setting Evaluation Tool for Diabetes (GET-D). The effectiveness of diabetes self-management is predicated on goal-setting and action planning strategies. Evaluation of self-management interventions is hampered by the absence of tools to assess quality of goals and action plans.

Fostering students' reflection about bias in healthcare: cognitive dissonance and the role of personal and normative standards.

Background: To reduce cognitive dissonance about one's beliefs or behavior, individuals may compare their behavior to personal and/or normative standards. The details of this reflection process are unclear.

Aims: We examined how medical students compare their behavior or beliefs to standards in discussions about implicit bias, and explored if and how different reflective pathways (preserving vs.

A standards-based, peer-reviewed teaching award to enhance a medical school's teaching environment and inform the promotions process.

The authors provide the rationale, design, and description of a unique teaching award that has enhanced Baylor College of Medicine's teaching environment and become highly valued by the promotions and tenure (P&T) committee in determining a faculty member's readiness for promotion. This award is self-nominating and standards based. The primary purpose for development of the award was to provide the Baylor community and the P&T committee a method to understand and value the scholarship of teaching to the same degree that they understand and value the scholarship of discovery.

Factor structure and convergent validity of the inventory of interpersonal problems in an inpatient setting.

The Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP32) is a self-report measure designed to be used in clinical settings to assess interpersonal difficulties. However, it has been exclusively used in either outpatient or non-clinical settings, and psychometric data concerning its use in inpatients are limited. The current study examined the factor structure and construct validity of the IIP-32, and ways to optimally use this measure with inpatients at a private hospital providing intensive treatment.

Improving quality of care through improved audit and feedback.

Background: The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has led the industry in measuring facility performance as a critical element in improving quality of care, investing substantial resources to develop and maintain valid and cost-effective measures. The External Peer Review Program (EPRP) of the VA is the official data source for monitoring facility performance, used to prioritize the quality areas needing most attention. Facility performance measurement has significantly improved preventive and chronic care, as well as overall quality; however, much variability still exists in levels of performance across measures and facilities.

Helping medical learners recognise and manage unconscious bias toward certain patient groups.

Context: For the last 30 years, developments in cognitive sciences have demonstrated that human behaviour, beliefs and attitudes are shaped by automatic and unconscious cognitive processes. Only recently has much attention been paid to how unconscious biases based on certain patient characteristics may: (i) result in behaviour that is preferential toward or against specific patients; (ii) influence treatment decisions, and (iii) adversely influence the patient-doctor relationship. Partly in response to accreditation requirements, medical educators are now exploring how they might help students and residents to develop awareness of their own potential biases and strategies to mitigate them.

VA community mental health service providers' utilization of and attitudes toward telemental health care: the gatekeeper's perspective.

Context: Mental health (MH) providers in community-based outpatient clinics (CBOCs) are important stakeholders in the development of the Veterans Health Administration (VA) telemental health (TMH) system, but their perceptions of these technologies have not been systematically examined.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes of CBOC providers about TMH services, current utilization of these technologies in their clinics, and sources of knowledge regarding TMH.

Method: The study employed a mixed-methods design to examine aspects of TMH in CBOCs located in a VA network in the south-central United States.

Knowing the ABCs: a comparative effectiveness study of two methods of diabetes education.

Objective: To test an active-learning, empowerment approach to teaching patients about the "diabetes ABCs" (hemoglobin A(1)C, systolic blood pressure, and low density lipoprotein cholesterol).

Methods: 84 (97%) diabetic patients who participated in a randomized effectiveness trial of two clinic-based group educational methods and completed a post-intervention assessment. The empowerment arm participated in a group session that incorporated two educational innovations (a conceptual metaphor to foster understanding, and team-based learning methods to foster active learning).