Five ways to get a grip on applying a program evaluation model in health professions education academies.

The proliferation of health professions educator academies across Canada and the United States illustrates the value they hold for faculty and institutions. Yet, establishing and evaluating the efficacy of them through program evaluation can be challenging. Moreover, academy leadership often lack the time, bandwidth skillset and personnel to undertake rigorous program evaluation efforts.

Keepers of the House: A documentary.

Background: Our documentary, Keepers of the House, highlights ways that hospital housekeepers, typically unnoticed care team members, provide emotional support for patients and their families. This film addresses a gap in education by emphasizing the importance of valuing and reflecting on the unique lived experiences of others.

Approach: We created this documentary to expose students to the experiences and perceptions of hospital housekeepers.

Spaced Repetition Flashcards for Teaching Medical Students Psychiatry.

Objective: Retrieval practice, often using electronic flashcards, is increasingly utilized among medical students for self-study. In this study, the authors evaluated usage and satisfaction with electronic flashcards based on a medical school psychiatry curriculum.

Methods: First-year medical students at one institution consented to participate and received access to a set of pre-made flashcards.

Discontinuation of the USMLE Step 2 Clinical Skills Examination: Studying the Past to Define the Future.

The United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 2 Clinical Skills (CS) was discontinued in January 2021, marking a significant milestone in assessment of clinical skills. In this commentary, the authors trace the history of the Step 2 CS exam-beginning with its early roots in the 1960s up to its discontinuation in 2021. In this new era, the medical education community is replete with opportunities for advancing methodology and content associated with clinical skills assessment.

Grit protects medical students from burnout: a longitudinal study.

Background: Burnout is a serious issue plaguing the medical profession with potential negative consequences on patient care. Burnout symptoms are observed as early as medical school. Based on a Job Demands-Resources model, this study aims to assess associations between specific job resources measured at the beginning of the first year of medical school with burnout symptoms occurring later in the first year.

Evaluating the effectiveness of undergraduate clinical education programs.

Medical schools should use a variety of measures to evaluate the effectiveness of their clinical curricula. Both outcome measures and process measures should be included, and these can be organized according to the four-level training evaluation model developed by Donald Kirkpatrick. Managing evaluation data requires the institution to employ deliberate strategies to monitor signals in real-time and aggregate data so that informed decisions can be made.

Communities of Practice in Peer Review: Outlining a Group Review Process.

Traditional peer review remains the gold standard for assessing the merit of scientific scholarship for publication. Challenges to this model include reliance on volunteer contributions of individuals with self-reported expertise; lack of sufficient mentoring and training of new reviewers; and the isolated, noncollaborative nature of individual reviewer processes.The authors participated in an Association of American Medical Colleges peer-review workshop in November 2015 and were intrigued by the process of group peer review.

A Multi-Institution Collaboration to Define Core Content and Design Flexible Curricular Components for a Foundational Medical School Course: Implications for National Curriculum Reform.

Medical educators have not reached widespread agreement on core content for a U.S. medical school curriculum.

Digital chalk-talk videos improve knowledge and satisfaction in renal physiology.

The authors began a curriculum reform project to improve the experience in a Renal Physiology course for first-year medical students. Taking into account both the variety of learning preferences among students and the benefits of student autonomy, the authors hypothesized that adding digital chalk-talk videos to lecture notes and live lectures would improve student knowledge, course satisfaction, and engagement. The authors measured performance on the renal physiology exam before (the traditional curriculum) and for 2 yr after implementation of the new curriculum.

Is it a match? a novel method of evaluating medical school success.

Background: Medical education program evaluation allows for curricular improvements to both Undergraduate (UME) and Graduate Medical Education (GME). UME programs are left with little more than match rates and self-report to evaluate success of graduates in The Match.

Objective: This manuscript shares a novel method of program evaluation through a systematic assessment of Match outcomes.

From the coliseum to the convention centre: a reflection on the current state of medical education conferences and conference-goers.

The advancement of knowledge and development of policy in the field of medical education require critical academic discourse among the most intelligent medical educators; and critical academic discourse requires coffee. In this essay, we reflect on the state of professional development conferences in the field of medical education and the rituals that surround their success. Having begun in ancient Greece, symposia were ripe with debauchery.

Mystery behind the match: an undergraduate medical education-graduate medical education collaborative approach to understanding match goals and outcomes.

Background: There is a paucity of information regarding institutional targets for the number of undergraduate medical education (UME) graduates being matched to graduate medical education (GME) programs at their home institutions. At our institution, the Duke University, the number of UME graduates matched to GME programs declined dramatically in 2011. To better understand why this decline may have happened, we sought to identify perceived quality metrics for UME and GME learners, evaluate trends in match outcomes and educational program characteristics, and explore whether there is an ideal retention rate for UME graduates in their home institutions' GME programs.

Expanding Group Peer Review: A Proposal for Medical Education Scholarship.

After participating in a group peer-review exercise at a workshop presented by Academic Medicine and MedEdPORTAL editors at the 2015 Association of American Medical Colleges Medical Education Meeting, the authors realized that the way their work group reviewed a manuscript was very different from the way by which they each would have reviewed the paper as an individual. Further, the group peer-review process yielded more robust feedback for the manuscript's authors than did the traditional individual peer-review process. This realization motivated the authors to reconvene and collaborate to write this Commentary to share their experience and propose the expanded use of group peer review in medical education scholarship.

A meaningful MESS (Medical Education Scholarship Support).

Background: Graduate medical education faculty bear the responsibility of demonstrating active research and scholarship; however, faculty who choose education-focused careers may face unique obstacles related to the lack of promotion tracks, funding, career options, and research opportunities. Our objective was to address education research and scholarship barriers by providing a collaborative peer-mentoring environment and improve the production of research and scholarly outputs.

Methods: We describe a Medical Education Scholarship Support (MESS) group created in 2013.

CaPOW! Using Problem Sets in a Capstone Course to Improve Fourth-Year Medical Students' Confidence in Self-Directed Learning.

Problem: Despite the importance of self-directed learning (SDL) in the field of medicine, individuals are rarely taught how to perform SDL or receive feedback on it. Trainee skill in SDL is limited by difficulties with self-assessment and goal setting.

Approach: Ninety-two graduating fourth-year medical students from Duke University School of Medicine completed an individualized learning plan (ILP) for a transition-to-residency Capstone course in spring 2015 to help foster their skills in SDL.

Teaching crucial skills: An electrocardiogram teaching module for medical students.

Background: Medical student performance in electrocardiogram (ECG) interpretation at our institution could be improved. Varied resources exist to teach students this essential skill.

Methods: We created an ECG teaching module (ECGTM) of 75 cases representing 15 diagnoses to improve medical students' performance and confidence in ECG interpretation.

Using Transitional Year Milestones to Assess Graduating Medical Students' Skills During a Capstone Course.

Background: Undergraduate medical education (UME) follows the lead of graduate medical education (GME) in moving to competency-based assessment. The means for and the timing of competency-based assessments in UME are unclear.

Objective: We explored the feasibility of using the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education Transitional Year (TY) Milestones to assess student performance during a mandatory, fourth-year capstone course.

How We Engage Graduating Professional Students in Interprofessional Patient Safety.

Problem: Interprofessional curricula on patient safety do not acknowledge the culture and vulnerabilities of the student experience and often do not engage students.

Methods: We describe a patient safety collaboration between graduating nursing and medical students during their Capstone courses that fostered conversations about the similarities and differences in professional school experiences around patient safety. Students wrote reflections about an unanticipated patient outcome.

The Impact of a Mandatory Immersion Curriculum in Integrative Medicine for Graduating Medical Students.

Background: Although many Americans utilize complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) services and products, few medical school curricula consistently provide instruction in counseling patients on the use of CAM or strategies for identifying credible evidence on the safety and effectiveness of CAM therapies.

Methods: This is a mixed methods study. A sustainable, mandatory, half-day CAM immersion curriculum for graduating medical students is described.

A comparison of the effectiveness of the team-based learning readiness assessments completed at home to those completed in class.

Purpose: The readiness assurance process (RAP) of team-based learning (TBL) is an important element that ensures that students come prepared to learn. However, the RAP can use a significant amount of class time which could otherwise be used for application exercises. The authors administered the TBL-associated RAP in class or individual readiness assurance tests (iRATs) at home to compare medical student performance and learning preference for physiology content.

The Primary Care Leadership Track at the Duke University School of Medicine: creating change agents to improve population health.

Problem: Physicians need training in community engagement, leadership, and population health to prepare them to work with partners within the community and to adapt medical care to address population health needs.

Approach: With an overall goal of training primary care practitioners to be change agents for improving population health, the Duke University School of Medicine launched the Primary Care Leadership Track (PCLT) in 2011. The four-year PCLT curriculum requires students to contribute to existing community health initiatives, perform community-engaged research, and participate in leadership training.

Effect of vitamin E on tamoxifen-treated breast cancer cells.

Background: Induction of apoptosis by tamoxifen has been postulated to involve oxidative stress. Tamoxifen (TAM) may act on estrogen receptors (ER) located in the plasma membrane. Our hypothesis that supplemental antioxidant vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol) acts at the plasma membrane to alter the effectiveness of tamoxifen was tested in ER-positive breast cancer cell lines, MCF-7 and T47D.

Vitamin E succinate decreases lung cancer tumor growth in mice.

Background: In vitro studies have shown that Vitamin E succinate (VES) arrests lung cancer proliferation; however, in vivo studies have not been performed. This study examined in vivo effects of VES on lung cancer.

Methods: An in vitro dose-response curve of human A549 lung cancer tumors to VES was established.

A threshold for central T cell tolerance to an inducible serum protein.

We report an inducible system of self Ag expression that examines the relationship between serum protein levels and central T cell tolerance. This transgenic approach is based on tetracycline-regulated expression of a secreted form of hen egg lysozyme, tagged with a murine hemoglobin (Hb) epitope. In the absence of the tetracycline-regulated transactivator, serum levels of the chimeric protein are extremely low (< or = 0.