Impact of a pre-clinical clinical skills curriculum on student performance in third-year clerkships.

Background: Research on the outcomes of pre-clinical curricula for clinical skills development is needed to assess their influence on medical student performance in clerkships.

Objective: To better understand the impact of a clinical-skills curriculum in the pre-clinical setting on student performance.

Design: We conducted a non-randomized, retrospective, pre-post review of student performance evaluations from 3rd-year clerkships, before and after implementation of a clinical-skills curriculum, the Colleges (2001-2007).

Development and evaluation of public health informatics at University of Washington.

Public Health Informatics (PHI) education began at the University of Washington (UW) with a Summer Institute in 1995. The Biomedical and Health Informatics graduate program, which is housed in the School of Medicine, is an interdisciplinary, multi-school program. It demonstrates the UW's cooperative efforts in advancing informatics, encompassing the schools of public health, medicine, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, information and graduate schools in computer science.