Publications by authors named "Hoffert M"

Background: Virtual interviewing for fellowship training programs has been widely adopted since the COVID-19 pandemic. However, whether fellowship candidates can adequately evaluate training program culture through virtual interviews is unclear.

Objective: Our aim was to explore how pulmonary and critical care fellows ascertained program culture during virtual and in-person fellowship program recruitment interviews, with the overall goal of improving our virtual recruiting interview processes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Genomic information is now available for a broad diversity of bacteria, including uncultivated taxa. However, we have corresponding knowledge on environmental preferences (i.e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Not all bacteria are fast growers. In soil as in other environments, bacteria exist along a continuum-from copiotrophs that can grow rapidly under resource-rich conditions to oligotrophs that are adapted to life in the "slow lane." However, the field of microbiology is built almost exclusively on the study of copiotrophs due, in part, to the ease of studying them .

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Educational approaches for training physicians in clinical communications vary, and whether physicians apply the communication skills they learn or find them useful in the clinic is not well known. The aim of this study was to determine how first-year residents who received explicit instruction in 7 communication strategies would apply them in a simulation exercise and in clinical practice.

Methods: First-year Internal Medicine residents at an urban teaching hospital received instruction in 7 systematic communication strategies: Ask-Tell-Ask, Teach-back, open-ended questioning, NURSE, open body language, pausing, and plain language.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Problem: Systematically investigating annual Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Resident/Fellow Survey results by directly gathering trainee feedback could uncover training program problems and clarify misunderstandings as they arise, leading to faster corrective actions and program improvement.

Approach: The Focus Group Forum (FGF) was created based on the utilization-focused evaluation approach to systematically gather comprehensive, high-quality, actionable trainee feedback on specific annual ACGME survey results and involve trainees in program improvement (Henry Ford Hospital, 2021). Trainees from programs with survey results indicating <80% compliance within several content areas were invited to attend FGF sessions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The environmental preferences of many microbes remain undetermined. This is the case for bacterial pH preferences, which can be difficult to predict a priori despite the importance of pH as a factor structuring bacterial communities in many systems. We compiled data on bacterial distributions from five datasets spanning pH gradients in soil and freshwater systems (1470 samples), quantified the pH preferences of bacterial taxa across these datasets, and compiled genomic data from representative bacterial taxa.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Research has explored the problems that women encounter during a medical career; however, the advice that experienced women physicians would give to women who have not yet entered the field is needed to reveal how the medical work landscape is evolving and to provide real-world narratives to help career seekers make informed choices.

Objective: By eliciting women's perspectives on their medical careers by asking them what advice they would give to aspiring women physicians, we aimed to reveal areas for improving career satisfaction of women physicians and to inform those who advise women considering a medical career.

Methods: In this qualitative study, we used a phenomenological approach to conduct semi-structured one-on-one interviews with 24 women physicians to query the advice they would give to women contemplating a career in medicine.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Unlabelled: Poor patient knowledge about transplantation is a significant problem following kidney transplant. A video-based educational intervention was developed to supplement standard education provided by transplant teams.

Methods: A multicenter randomized controlled trial tested the intervention delivered to patients undergoing assessment or waitlisted for kidney transplant.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Hydrogenotrophic methanogens are ubiquitous chemoautotrophic archaea inhabiting globally distributed deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems and associated subseafloor niches within the rocky subseafloor, yet little is known about how they adapt and diversify in these habitats. To determine genomic variation and selection pressure within methanogenic populations at vents, we examined five single cell amplified genomes (SAGs) in conjunction with 15 metagenomes and 10 metatranscriptomes from venting fluids at two geochemically distinct hydrothermal vent fields on the Mid-Cayman Rise in the Caribbean Sea. We observed that some lineages and their transcripts were more abundant than others in individual vent sites, indicating differential fitness among lineages.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Developing as a physician requires an enormous amount of complex training, and quality of instruction greatly affects training outcomes. But while physicians are expected to teach trainees within the clinic, they often do not receive formal training in effective instructional practices. Providing faculty development programs is one way that institutions can help physicians develop teaching skills, but these programs often are developed without the input of educational specialists and not based in educational theory.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Well-being activities may help to counteract physician burnout. Yoga is known to enhance well-being, but there are few studies of yoga as an intervention for physicians in training. This prospective methodology-development study aimed to explore how to establish a yoga-based well-being intervention for physician trainees in a large urban training hospital.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Studies have shown that the education of resident physicians on health care disparities (HCDs) needs improvement. We implemented a system-wide program on HCD for residents and evaluated outcomes across 1 year. Designed in 2015 by a multidisciplinary team, the HCD program incorporated information about our health system's patient population and the tenets of unconscious bias.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Some energy services and industrial processes-such as long-distance freight transport, air travel, highly reliable electricity, and steel and cement manufacturing-are particularly difficult to provide without adding carbon dioxide (CO) to the atmosphere. Rapidly growing demand for these services, combined with long lead times for technology development and long lifetimes of energy infrastructure, make decarbonization of these services both essential and urgent. We examine barriers and opportunities associated with these difficult-to-decarbonize services and processes, including possible technological solutions and research and development priorities.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A dual-band, fiber-optic, photon time-of-flight instrument was developed. Its design was optimized for measuring the velocity of visible photons emanating from relatively dim astronomical sources (apparent magnitude m>12), such as distant galaxies and quasars. We report the first direct photon group velocity measurements for extragalactic objects.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Since the inception of 3D printing, an evolutionary process has taken place in which specific user and customer needs have crossed paths with the capabilities of a growing number of machines to create value-added businesses. Even today, over 30 years later, the growth of 3D printing and its utilization for the good of society is often limited by the various users' understanding of the technology for their specific needs. This article presents an overview of current 3D printing technologies and shows numerous examples from a multitude of fields from manufacturing to education.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change calls for "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." Even if we could determine a "safe" level of interference in the climate system, the sensitivity of global mean temperature to increasing atmospheric CO2 is known perhaps only to a factor of three or less. Here we show how a factor of three uncertainty in climate sensitivity introduces even greater uncertainty in allowable increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration and allowable CO2 emissions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Stabilizing the carbon dioxide-induced component of climate change is an energy problem. Establishment of a course toward such stabilization will require the development within the coming decades of primary energy sources that do not emit carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, in addition to efforts to reduce end-use energy demand. Mid-century primary power requirements that are free of carbon dioxide emissions could be several times what we now derive from fossil fuels (approximately 10(13) watts), even with improvements in energy efficiency.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We studied transnasal butorphanol (Stadol NS) for pain relief during acute migraine in a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled trial using ambulatory patients at 10 geographically diverse headache centers. Patients were volunteer adults diagnosed with migraine with or without aura by International Headache Society criteria. One hundred fifty-seven patients completed the study.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We conducted a multicenter, double-blind, parallel-group study to compare the efficacy and safety of dihydroergotamine (DHE) nasal spray and placebo over 4 hours in the treatment of migraine. Of the 112 patients enrolled, 100 were included in the "intent-to-treat" efficacy analysis. The patients self-administered either 2.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Treatment of migraine: a new era.

Am Fam Physician

February 1994

Current research has refuted the vascular theory of migraine. New insights into the phenomenon of migraine are leading to alternative treatments. Sumatriptan is the first of many new drugs that will augment the treatment of migraine.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In this paper we report the prevalence of self-medication and polypharmacy in our patient population at the John R. Graham Headache Centre at the Faulkner Hospital, Boston. One hundred fifty patients were interviewed when they called the Headache Centre and spoke to a triage nurse.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Recordings were made from L4-S1 spinal ganglion neurons of anesthetized cats while their associated dorsal root and the sciatic nerve were left intact, locally anesthetized, or locally anesthetized and sectioned. In all three experimental conditions spontaneous discharges were recorded. These discharges occurred in the absence of any electrical stimulation of the dorsal root or sciatic nerve, and were not due to peripheral exploration of receptive fields or sustained firing in joint or muscle afferents.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF