Faculty Vitality in Osteopathic Medical Schools: A Pilot Study.

Context: Faculty vitality is defined as the synergy between high levels of satisfaction, productivity, and engagement that enables faculty members to maximize their professional success and achieve goals in concert with institutional goals. Many studies have examined faculty development efforts with regard to satisfaction, retention, or vitality, but, to the authors' knowledge, they have all been conducted in allopathic medical schools and academic health centers.

Objective: To examine faculty vitality in osteopathic medical schools and address contributors to productivity, engagement, and career satisfaction.

Student Perceptions of iPad Applications-Assisted Instruction in Health Professions Education.

The purpose of this study was to examine student's perceptions of the iPad applications-assisted instruction as part of their learning. In this study, multiple features and applications were evaluated as an instructional tool. Fifteen participants responded to the survey indicating their perceptions of the iPad and applications used as part of their course delivery.

Developing, evaluating and validating a scoring rubric for written case reports.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate Family Medicine Clerkship students' writing skills using an anchored scoring rubric. In this study, we report on the assessment of a current scoring rubric (SR) used to grade written case description papers (CDP) for medical students, describe the development of a revised SR with examination of scoring consistency among faculty raters, and report on feedback from students regarding SR revisions and written CDP.

Methods: Five faculty members scored a total of eighty-three written CDP using both the Original SR (OSR) and the Revised SR1 (RSR1) during the 2009-2010 academic years.

Open book tests: assessment of academic learning in clerkships.

An examination of an open-book testing approach in a family medicine clerkship seeks to determine whether this method more closely mirrors the discipline of family medicine, where practitioners refer daily to written resource materials in order to make clinical decisions without compromising the learning and assessment process. Student scores on the multiple-choice test were analysed by year, by quarter and by site using ANOVA. Students in the experimental site were interviewed to determine preparation style, use of text during test, as well as attitudes toward open-book testing.