Practice Report / Bericht aus der Praxis: Tutor training for a peer-assisted interprofessional communication seminar: A work in progress.

A novel peer-led communication seminar for medical students and for students of the Interprofessional Health Care B.Sc. degree programme at the Medical Faculty of Heidelberg is currently being developed to address the increasing need for interprofessional collaborative competencies in health care professionals.

Digital rectal examination skills: first training experiences, the motives and attitudes of standardized patients.

Background: Physical clinical examination is a core clinical competence of medical doctors. In this regard, digital rectal examination (DRE) plays a central role in the detection of abnormalities of the anus and rectum. However, studies in undergraduate medical students as well as newly graduated doctors show that they are insufficiently prepared for performing DRE.

An innovative model for teaching complex clinical procedures: integration of standardised patients into ward round training for final year students.

Objectives: Ward rounds are an essential activity for doctors in hospital settings and represent complex tasks requiring not only medical knowledge but also communication skills, clinical technical skills, patient management skills and team-work skills. However, although the need for ward round training is emphasized in the published literature, there are currently no reports of ward round training in a simulated setting with standardized patients.

Methods: 45 final year students participated in a ward round training session lasting two hours with three standardized patient scenarios and role-plays.

A user-friendly approach to program evaluation and effective community interventions for families at risk of homelessness.

This article demonstrates how a user-friendly evaluation of a federally funded homeless prevention program using an action research approach--and using a logic model as the analytic framework--informed multiple stakeholders, including members of Congress, other decision makers, and Family Center practitioners. The program's target population was very low-income families at risk of being evicted from public housing. The authors discuss the methods used, the application of the logic model, and the study's findings as they unfolded in four phases: (1) logic modeling as program planning, (2) conceptualizing the intervention, (3) delineating implementation processes, and (4) determining the range of client outcomes.

High-energy shock wave treatment of femoral head necrosis in adults.

Adults with Stages I to III osteonecrosis of the femoral head present an overall therapeutic challenge. The objective of the current prospective study was to show the effectiveness of high-energy shock wave therapy in treatment of patients with Association Research Circulation Osseous Stage I to Stage III necrosis of the femoral head by assessing clinical and magnetic resonance imaging results. The current study presents the results of 22 patients with femoral head necrosis 1 year after shock wave treatment.