The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic forced international faculty development programs in medical education to forgo in-person activities and transition to online learning. We sought to examine changes in international medical educators' evaluations of our faculty development program as it transitioned due to the pandemic. We compared survey responses from participants in our International Medical Educators Program between 2019 (in-person) and 2020 (online).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article introduces the concept of "teacher immediacy," defined as the teacher's communication behaviors that reduce the psychological distance between teacher and students. Though well investigated and recognized in the area of instructional communication, this concept is still new to the field of medical education. The authors first describe the origin, definition, and indicators of teacher immediacy, and then present empirical research findings on teacher immediacy's positive associations with effective teaching.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Adherent pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) uptake can prevent HIV infections. Despite the high HIV incidence, Chinese key populations have low PrEP uptake and adherence. New interventions are needed to increase PrEP adherence among key populations in China.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPerspectives on the nature of learning influence decisions about curriculum design, teaching and learning strategies, and assessment of students. Current literature on medical education suggests that medical teachers have much interest in using theories to inform their practice. This article describes the following learning theories that have been discussed to various degrees in previous literature on medical education: cognitivism, constructivism, experiential learning, adult learning, self-directed learning, community of practice and situated learning, cognitive apprenticeship, and reflective learning.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: The Australian Government funded a nationwide diabetic retinopathy screening programme to improve visual outcomes for people with diabetes. This study examined the benefits and barriers of the programme, image interpretation pathways and assessed the characteristics of people who had their fundus photos graded by a telereading service which was available as a part of the programme.
Design: Multimethod: survey and retrospective review of referral forms.
Background: Neurosurgeons have limited tools in their armamentarium to visualize critical brain networks during surgical planning. Quicktome was designed using machine-learning to generate robust visualization of important brain networks that can be used with standard neuronavigation to minimize those deficits. We sought to see whether Quicktome could help localize important cerebral networks and tracts during intracerebral surgery.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCornea
February 2022
Purpose: The aim of this study is to describe the technique of subpalpebral antibiotic lavage (SAL), which is a highly therapeutic, efficient, and cost-effective method for managing severe bacterial keratitis.
Methods: This case report describes a 26-year-old woman with severe bacterial keratitis in the right eye due to contact lens overwear, with progressive corneal thinning, a hypopyon, impending perforation, and marked visual loss to perception of light despite treatment with intensive topical antibiotics. This was managed with SAL that involves the insertion of a cannula transcutaneously into the upper conjunctival fornix to provide continuous antibiotic irrigation of the ocular surface.
Ophthalmic Plast Reconstr Surg
April 2021
Objectives: To describe the experiences, priorities, and needs of patients with rheumatic disease and their parents during transition from paediatric to adult healthcare.
Setting: Face-to-face and telephone semistructured interviews were conducted from December 2018 to September 2019 recruited from five hospital centres in Australia.
Participants: Fourteen young people and 16 parents were interviewed.
Objectives: We aimed to describe patients' attitudes and experiences of transition from paediatric to adult healthcare in rheumatology to inform patient-centred transitional care programmes.
Methods: We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO and CINAHL to August 2019 and used thematic synthesis to analyse the findings.
Results: From 26 studies involving 451 people with juvenile-onset rheumatic conditions we identified six themes: a sense of belonging (comfort in familiarity, connectedness in shared experiences, reassurance in being with others of a similar age, desire for normality and acceptance); preparedness for sudden changes (confidence through guided introductions to the adult environment, rapport from continuity of care, security in a reliable point of contact, minimizing lifestyle disruptions); abandonment and fear of the unknown (abrupt and forced independence, ill-equipped to hand over medical information, shocked by meeting adults with visible damage and disability, vulnerability in the loss of privacy); anonymous and dismissed in adult care (deprived of human focus, sterile and uninviting environment, disregard of debilitating pain and fatigue); quest for autonomy (controlled and patronized in the paediatric environment, liberated from the authority of others, freedom to communicate openly); and tensions in parental involvement (overshadowed by parental presence, guilt of excluding parents, reluctant withdrawal of parental support).
Temporal arteritis (TA), or giant cell arteritis, is a systemic autoimmune vasculitis affecting patients over 50 years of age. It can cause rapid, irreversible bilateral vision loss in older adults and is therefore considered an ophthalmological emergency. Many of the symptoms and signs of TA can be vague, non-specific and gradual in onset, often leading to a delayed or inaccurate diagnosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of trial registration in health research, whether trial registration status and timing vary depending on trial characteristics, and the relationship between trial registration status and risk of bias.
Study Design And Setting: We systematically reviewed all clinical trials published from January to June 2017 in 28 high- and low-impact factor general and specialty medicine journals.
Results: We identified 370 trials and assessed risk of bias in 183 trials.
Despite widespread reforms in medical education across China, nationally there has been no mandate or movement toward systemically incorporating geriatrics into curricula. To what degree medical students are trained and have exposure to geriatric topics remains unclear. We surveyed 190 medical students during their final year of medical school at a Chinese medical university, graduating from reformed and also traditional curricula.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe essential role of clinical case discussions in the teaching of medical ethics is well recognized. Based upon published literature and the authors' curricular development experience, the following 12 tips cover all major aspects of the case method for teaching clinical ethics and offer practical suggestions for designing and conducting case discussions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Ethics teaching is a relatively new area of medical education in China, with ethics curricula at different levels of development. This study examined ethics education at three medical schools in China to understand their curricular content, teaching and learning methods, forms of assessments, changes over time, and what changes are needed for further improvement.
Methods: We used student and faculty surveys to obtain information about the ethics courses' content, teaching methods, and revisions over time.