Alumni Perspectives on the Role of Medical School Service Learning Experiences in Their Professional Development and Practice.

Purpose: Understand how participation in service-learning activities in medical school influenced physicians' early careers.

Methods: Researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with physicians who had completed residency training and held leadership positions within an established medical-student-run, service-learning initiative. The research team analyzed the interviews iteratively, using an editing coding strategy to identify categories, and identified themes by prolonged data immersion.

Commonsense illness beliefs, adherence behaviors, and hypertension control among African Americans.

Hypertension, particularly among African Americans, has been increasing in importance in the past 10 years. One aspect of this problem is poor disease management. This study examined illness beliefs, behaviors, and hypertension control among 102 African American outpatients.

Effectiveness of a time-limited cognitive behavior therapy type intervention among primary care patients with medically unexplained symptoms.

Purpose: Patients seeking care for medically unexplained physical symptoms pose a major challenge at primary care sites, and there are very few well-accepted and properly evaluated interventions to manage such patients.

Methods: We tested the effectiveness of a cognitive behavior therapy (CBT)-type intervention delivered in primary care for patients with medically unexplained physical symptoms. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either the intervention plus a consultation letter or usual clinical care plus a consultation letter.

Recognition of sleep disorders in a community-based setting following an educational intervention.

Background And Purpose: To determine the recognition of sleep disorders in a community-based outpatient health setting following an educational intervention for health care professionals. Previously we have reported very low rates of recognition of sleep disorders in minority and medically indigent populations in a community-based setting. This omission is significant, since there is evidence of an increased number of sleep disorders among minority populations.