Annual program review process: an enhanced process with outcomes.

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education's required Annual Program Review of Educational Effectiveness (APREE) has helped us improve our program and change its culture to one of continuous quality improvement. This report outlines our systematic process and describes specific outcomes it has produced over a 10-year period. We identified ways to enhance our APREE after reading articles that described various ways to conduct the process found in a PubMed and OvidSP search and relevant policies from our local Graduate Medical Education Office.

Implementation of interprofessional education (IPE) in 16 U.S. medical schools: Common practices, barriers and facilitators.

Background: Enhanced patient outcomes and accreditation criteria have led schools to integrate interprofessional education (IPE). While several studies describe IPE curricula at individual institutions, few examine practices across multiple institutions.

Purpose: To examine the IPE integration at different institutions and determine gaps where there is potential for improvement.

The Electronic Health Record Objective Structured Clinical Examination: Assessing Student Competency in Patient Interactions While Using the Electronic Health Record.

Problem: Because many medical students do not have access to electronic health records (EHRs) in the clinical environment, simulated EHR training is necessary. Explicitly training medical students to use EHRs appropriately during patient encounters equips them to engage patients while also attending to the accuracy of the record and contributing to a culture of information safety.

Approach: Faculty developed and successfully implemented an EHR objective structured clinical examination (EHR-OSCE) for clerkship students at two institutions.

A case-based approach for teaching professionalism to residents with online discussions.

Introduction: Programs must demonstrate that their residents are taught and assessed in professionalism. Most programs struggle with finding viable ways to teach and assess this critical competency. UTHSCSA Family and Community Medicine Residency developed an innovative option for interactive learning and assessment of residents in this competency which would be transferrable to other programs and specialties.

Iatro-compliance: an unintended consequence of excessive autonomy in long term care facilities.

Purpose: Periodontal disease and caries remain the most prevalent preventable chronic diseases for seniors. Seniors transitioning into long term care facilities (LTCFs) often present with oral health challenges linked to systemic diseases, plaque control, psychomotor skills and oral health literacy. Many retain a discernible level of physical and cognitive ability, establishing considerable autonomy.

Advanced primary care in San Antonio: linking practice and community strategies to improve health.

Improving health among people living in poverty often transcends narrowly focused illness care. Meaningful success is unlikely without confronting the complex social origins of illness. We describe an emerging community of solution to improve health outcomes for a population of 6000 San Antonio, Texas, residents enrolled in a county health care program.

The annual program review of effectiveness: a process improvement approach.

All residencies and fellowships are required by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and local institutional policy to conduct an annual program review of educational effectiveness. However, a number of family medicine residencies were cited for having an inadequate annual review or for failing to document the review in 2008. The ACGME and university offices of graduate medical education provide program directors some guidance on conducting and documenting annual program reviews, but few articles describe a detailed process for such a review.

Smiles for Life: A National Oral Health Curriculum for Family Medicine. A model for curriculum development by STFM groups.

The Society of Teachers of Family Medicine Group on Oral Health released Smiles for Life: A National Oral Health Curriculum for Family Medicine in October 2005 to address a need for high-quality residency and medical school curricula in an area of documented physician knowledge deficit. This article describes the background, planning, fund-raising, development, dissemination, and impact of the curriculum. Lessons learned, particularly in the areas of long-distance collaboration, fund-raising, and marketing are reviewed with a goal of serving as a model for future curriculum development efforts.

Using a modified nominal group technique as a curriculum evaluation tool.

The modified nominal group technique (NGT) is a useful and practical course evaluation tool that complements existing methods such as evaluation forms, surveys, pretests and posttests, focus groups, and interviews. The NGT's unique contribution to the evaluation process is the semi-quantitative, rank-ordered feedback data obtained on learners' perceptions of a course's strengths and weaknesses. In this paper, we demonstrate through a worked example how to use a modified NGT as a course evaluation tool in medical education.

The BELIEF Instrument: a preclinical teaching tool to elicit patients' health beliefs.

Purpose: The BELIEF Instrument is a cultural interviewing tool for preclinical medical students that does not require diagnostic or therapeutic skills.

Methods: An expert panel developed and taught the instrument to 200 first-year medical students in (1) a didactic session, (2) standardized patient interviews, and (3) clinical correlation sessions with community physicians and third-year medical students. Standardized patients evaluated students on the BELIEF questions in a graded interview.

Developing and evaluating ambulatory care: problem-based learning cases.

Medical educators have raised concerns about the quality of teaching and learning in busy ambulatory care settings. Problem-based learning (PBL), which allows students to learn to diagnose and manage common ambulatory care problems as they discuss patients away from the clinical setting, is one possible solution for addressing these concerns. This article describes a process for developing realistic and well-written PBL cases for an ambulatory care clerkship.

Guidelines for constructing a survey.

Many researchers in family medicine use surveys to gather data from colleagues, learners, and patients on their demographics, personal histories, knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes. Well-written surveys are easy for respondents to complete, gather information accurately and consistently, and obtain data that can be analyzed to answer research questions. All levels of family medicine researchers can follow eight steps to develop surveys that produce useful and publishable results: (1) state the problem or need, (2) plan the project, (3) state the research question, (4) review the literature, (5) develop or adapt existing survey items, (6) construct the survey, (7) conduct pilot tests, and (8) administer the survey.