Career intentions and perceptions of general practice on entry to medical school: baseline findings of a longitudinal survey at three UK universities.

Background: Medical graduates from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge have a lower intention to become GPs compared with other UK medical graduates. It is not clear to what extent this difference is present on admission to medical school.

Aim: To compare the career intention and influencing factors of students on admission to different UK medical schools.

Taking care of our future doctors: a service evaluation of a medical student mental health service.

Background: Studies suggest medical students experience high levels of mental distress during training but are less likely, than other students, to access care due to stigma and concerns regarding career progression. In response, The School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge supported the development of the 'Clinical Student Mental Health Service' to provide specialist input for this vulnerable group. This study evaluates the efficiency and effectiveness of this service.

Management of primary hyperparathyroidism in pregnancy: a case series.

Primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) is characterised by the overproduction of parathyroid hormone (PTH) due to parathyroid hyperplasia, adenoma or carcinoma and results in hypercalcaemia and a raised or inappropriately normal PTH. Symptoms of hypercalcaemia occur in 20% of patients and include fatigue, nausea, constipation, depression, renal impairment and cardiac arrythmias. In the most severe cases, uraemia, coma or cardiac arrest can result.

Palliative care in medical practice: medical students' expectations.

Objectives: During their careers, all doctors will be involved in the care of the dying, and this is likely to increase with current demographic trends. Future doctors need to be well-prepared for this. Little is known about medical students' expectations about providing palliative care.

Patients' experiences with home parenteral nutrition: A grounded theory study.

Background & Aims: Parenteral nutrition (PN) provides nourishment and hydration as an intravenous infusion to patients with intestinal failure (IF). The aim of the study is to generate theory that explains the experiences of adult patients living with home parenteral nutrition (HPN) and complex medication regimens.

Methods: A grounded theory methodology was used to explore the experiences of twelve patients receiving HPN.

Learning to care: medical students' reported value and evaluation of palliative care teaching involving meeting patients and reflective writing.

Background: Over recent years there has been an increase in teaching of both palliative care and reflective practice in UK medical schools. The palliative care teaching at the University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine is multi-faceted and involves students writing reflective essays after individually meeting patients approaching the end of life during their final year general practice and hospital medicine placements. This paper draws on two studies examining this teaching element to analyse what the students found valuable about it and to comment on the practice of meeting patients and subsequent reflective writing.

Developing a pragmatic medical curriculum for the 21st century.

Medical education within a hospital setting presents both opportunities and challenges. The range of educational experiences on offer is often vast, though may be lost in the overworked and convoluted environment of a tertiary centre. As our learners are increasingly consumed by the literal and figurative labyrinths of hospitals and electronic learning logs, are we failing to train them in the skills they need to deliver 21st century health care? In response to this problem we propose a FARCICAL approach: Fostering A Relevant Curriculum that Is Closer to Actual Life.

Empathy among undergraduate medical students: A multi-centre cross-sectional comparison of students beginning and approaching the end of their course.

Background: Although a core element in patient care the trajectory of empathy during undergraduate medical education remains unclear. Empathy is generally regarded as comprising an affective capacity: the ability to be sensitive to and concerned for, another and a cognitive capacity: the ability to understand and appreciate the other person's perspective. The authors investigated whether final year undergraduate students recorded lower levels of empathy than their first year counterparts, and whether male and female students differed in this respect.

Medical Students' Death Anxiety: Severity and Association With Psychological Health and Attitudes Toward Palliative Care.

Context: Death anxiety (DA) is related to awareness of the reality of dying and death and can be negatively related to a person's psychological health. Physicians' DA also may influence their care for patients approaching death. Doctors face death in a professional context for the first time at medical school, but knowledge about DA among medical students is limited.

An important but stressful part of their future work: medical students' attitudes to palliative care throughout their course.

Context: Palliative care (PC) education for medical students is important. Knowledge concerning drugs and services can be readily taught, and skills of communicating with terminally ill patients and their families are increasingly being addressed. Developing positive attitudes toward caring for patients near the end of life is more challenging.

Leadership and management in the undergraduate medical curriculum: a qualitative study of students' attitudes and opinions at one UK medical school.

Objective: To explore undergraduate medical students' attitudes towards and opinions about leadership and management education.

Design: Between 2009 and 2012 we conducted a qualitative study comprising five focus group discussions, each devoted to one of the five domains in the Medical Leadership Competency Framework, (Personal Qualities, Working with Others, Managing Services, Improving Services and Setting Direction). Each discussion examined what should be learnt, when should learning occur, what methods should be used, how should learning be assessed, what are the barriers to such education.

Medical student attitudes to the autopsy and its utility in medical education: a brief qualitative study at one UK medical school.

Attending postmortems enables students to learn anatomy and pathology within a clinical context, provides insights into effects of treatment and introduces the reality that patients die. Rates of clinical autopsies have declined and medical schools have cut obligatory autopsy sessions from their curricula making it difficult to assess medical student perceptions of, and attitudes towards, the educational value of autopsy. Our aim was to investigate these perceptions by designing a brief qualitative study comprising nominal technique and focus group discussions with Cambridge Graduate Course students, all of whom had attended autopsies.

Medical students' experience of personal loss: incidence and implications.

Background: Medical students are generally young people, often away from home for the first time and undertaking a course in which they are learning to care for people at all stages of life, including those approaching death. Existing research indicates that their experiences of personal bereavement may have significant implications for their pastoral welfare and medical learning. No previous studies have tracked medical student experience of bereavement longitudinally and no recent data are available from the UK.

The Cambridge Bachelor of Medicine (MB)/Doctor of Philosophy (PhD): graduate outcomes of the first MB/PhD programme in the UK.

We reviewed outcomes of the Cambridge Bachelor of Medicine (MB)/Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programme for the period 1989-2010. Of the 90 alumni contacted, 80 (89%; 24 women) completed an anonymous questionnaire. Thirty were academic staff and 35 were in general professional (core) or higher medical training.

Prevalence and persistence of depression among undergraduate medical students: a longitudinal study at one UK medical school.

Objectives: To determine the prevalence of depression among male and female medical students, its change over time and whether depression persists for affected students.

Design: Longitudinal study comprising annual questionnaire surveys which included the depression subscale of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS-D).

Participants: Between 2007 and 2010 all 1112 students entering the Core Science component (Year 1) and all 542 students entering the Clinical component (Year 4) of the Cambridge (UK) medical course were followed-up annually.

Attitudes of medical students to medical leadership and management: a systematic review to inform curriculum development.

Background: There is a growing acknowledgement that doctors need to develop leadership and management competences to become more actively involved in the planning, delivery and transformation of patient services. We undertook a systematic review of what is known concerning the knowledge, skills and attitudes of medical students regarding leadership and management. Here we report the results pertaining to the attitudes of students to provide evidence to inform curriculum development in this developing field of medical education.

Stability of empathy among undergraduate medical students: a longitudinal study at one UK medical school.

Background: Empathy is important to patient care. The prevailing view is that empathy declines during university medical education. The significance of that decline has been debated.

Student attitudes toward cadaveric dissection at a UK medical school.

A more humanistic approach toward dissection has emerged. However, student attitudes toward this approach are unknown and the influences on such attitudes are little understood. One hundred and fifty-six first-year medical students participated in a study examining firstly, attitudes toward the process of dissection and the personhood of the cadaver and secondly, the extent to which gender, anxiety, exposure to dissection, bereavement and prior experience of a dead body influenced these attitudes.

Problem based learning.

Time to stop arguing about the process and examine the outcomes

A model for widening access into medicine and dentistry: the SAMDA-BL project.

Objectives: To assess whether assistance with and/or advice on the UK Universities & Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) application process by undergraduate medical and dental students increases the offer rate to applicants from educational institutions situated in areas of socio-economic deprivation for medical and dental courses.

Methods: A sample of 42 students making 172 applications in 2001 and another sample of 40 students making 158 applications in 2002 from 4 further education and sixth form colleges across East London were entered into the study. Applicants were either offered advice and assistance with writing their personal statement and extra curricular activities, such as work experience (group A) or advice only on the importance of the personal statement and extra curricular activities (group B).