Transformative Leadership Training in Medical Education: A Topology.

Efforts to improve medical education often focus on optimizing technical aspects of teaching and learning. However, without considering the connection between the pedagogical-curricular and the foundational philosophically-defined educational aims of medicine and medical education, critical system reform is unlikely. The transformation of medical education requires leaders uniquely prepared to view medicine and medical education critically as it is and as it ought to be, and who have the capacity to lead changes aimed at overcoming the identified gaps.

Position paper: Teaching breaking bad news (BBN) to undergraduate medical students.

Sharing new medical information that is perceived as seriously effecting people's lives, i.e., breaking bad news (BBN) is important in caring for patients and relatives and is challenging for healthcare professionals.

Twelve tips to manage a breaking bad news process: Using S-P-w-ICE-S - A revised version of the SPIKES protocol.

Breaking bad news (BBN) is a difficult task that requires multiple professional competencies. The way it is managed has implications for all involved in the encounter: the patient, family members, and the news provider. Existing guidelines were developed mainly at the turn of the millennium and require updating based on identification of daily clinical needs and pedagogical challenges while teaching the current protocols.

Medical students' experiences and needs from written reflective journal feedback.

Introduction: Reflective ability is an important skill for enhancing professionalism and developing communication skills. To improve reflective ability, medical educators encourage use of written reflective journals, for which feedback is important. It is difficult for educators to anticipate how their feedback will be perceived.

The associations between reflective ability and communication skills among medical students.

Objectives: Assess associations between medical students' reflective ability demonstrated in written narratives, and communication skills demonstrated later in simulated-patient breaking bad news interactions.

Methods: We analyzed 66 medical students' reflective ability, using 'REFLECT' rubric and four newly developed parameters: Noticing Explanations provided to patients, Noticing Emotions, Remoteness/Connectedness in their writing, and mentioning Self-Emotions. 'BAS' and 'SPIKES' questionnaires measured students' communication skills.

Can doctors be taught virtue?

Medical schools and residency programs have become very adept at teaching medical students and residents an enormous amount of information. However, it is much less clear whether they are effective at fostering virtuous qualities like empathy or professionalism in trainees. This would come as no surprise to Plato, who famously argued in the Meno that virtue cannot be taught.

What you "see" is how you communicate: Medical students' meaning making of a patient's vignette.

Objectives: To examine how medical students notice issues in a vignette and construct their meaning, and how this construction influences their plan to communicate with the patient.

Methods: Following a breaking bad news course for 112 senior medical students, we qualitatively analyzed the participants' written descriptions of the issues they noticed as requiring special attention, using an Immersion/Crystallization iterative consensus process.

Results: Different students noticed different issues, but no-one noticed all 19 planted issues (Mean of issues noticed by students = 6.

See, reflect, learn more: qualitative analysis of breaking bad news reflective narratives.

Context: Breaking bad news (BBN) is a challenge that requires multiple professional competencies. BBN teaching often includes didactic and group role-playing sessions. Both are useful and important, but exclude another critical component of students' learning: day-to-day role-model observation in the clinics.

Medical education in Israel 2016: five medical schools in a period of transition.

Abstract: We reviewed the existing programs for basic medical education (BME) in Israel as well as their output, since they are in a phase of reassessment and transition. The transition has been informed, in part, by evaluation in 2014 by an International Review Committee (IRC). The review is followed by an analysis of its implications as well as the emergent roadmap for the future.

The role of medical schools in promoting social accountability through shared decision-making.

Reducing health inequalities and enhancing the social accountability of medical students and physicians is a challenge acknowledged by medical educators and professionals. It is usually perceived as a macro-level, community type intervention. This commentary suggests a different approach, an interpersonal way to decrease inequality and asymmetry in power relations to improve medical decisions and care.

The impact of senior medical students' personal difficulties on their communication patterns in breaking bad news.

Purpose: To evaluate the possible influence of personal difficulties and barriers that are within the news bearer and his or her self-awareness (SA) of them, on the patterns of communication during encounters involving breaking bad news (BBN).

Method: Following an intensive BBN course in 2004, 103 senior medical students at the Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, were evaluated for BBN competencies by the analysis of their written descriptions of how they visualized their manner of delivering bad news to a patient described in a challenging vignette. The students were further asked to reflect on their own difficulties and barriers that surfaced in response to reading the narrative presented in the vignette and in delivering the bad news.

Interphase fluorescence in situ hybridization detection of chromosome 17 and 17q region gains in neuroblastoma: are they secondary events?

Gains of chromosome 17 and 17q region are the most frequent chromosomal abnormalities in neuroblastoma and have been associated with established prognostic indicators. Interphase fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) was used to define the status of chromosome 17 in near-triploid (3n) and near-diploid/tetraploid (2n/4n) primary tumors. Gains of chromosome 17 and 17q were detected in 22 and 26 tumors, respectively, in which the ploidy status was determined mainly by the copy number of chromosome 1.