Combined formative and summative professional behaviour assessment approach in the bachelor phase of medical school: a Dutch perspective.

Background: Teaching and assessment of professional behaviour (PB) has been receiving increasing attention in the educational literature and educational practice. Although the focus tends to be summative aspects, it seems perfectly feasible to combine formative and summative approaches in one procedural approach.

Aims And Method: Although, many examples of frameworks of professionalism and PB can be found in the literature, most originate from North America, and only few are designed in other continents.

Quality of communication during telephone triage at Dutch out-of-hours centres.

Objective: To assess the quality of communication skills of triagists, working at out-of-hours (OOH) centres, and to determine the correlation between the communication score and the duration of the telephone consultation.

Methods: Telephone incognito standardised patients (TISPs) called 17 OOH centres presenting different clinical cases. The assessment of communication skills was carried out using the RICE-communication rating list.

Quality of clinical aspects of call handling at Dutch out of hours centres: cross sectional national study.

Objective: To assess the quality of telephone triage by following the consecutive phases of its care process and the quality of the clinical questions asked about the patient's clinical condition, of the triage outcome, of the content of the home management advice, and of the safety net advice given at out of hours centres.

Design: Cross sectional national study using telephone incognito standardised patients.

Setting: The Netherlands.

Assessing communication skills of clinical call handlers working at an out-of-hours centre: development of the RICE rating scale.

Background: Out-of-hours centres provide telephone support to patients with medical problems. In most of these centres specially-trained nurses handle incoming telephone calls. They assess patients' needs, the degree of urgency, and determine the level of care required.

Fielding incognito standardised patients as 'known' patients in a controlled trial in general practice.

Background: Incognito standardised patients (SPs) have only been used to represent new patients so far. The few trials with incognito SPs provide little detail on the method used for fielding them.

Objective: To establish the feasibility of introducing SPs as 'known' patients (i.

GPs' needs for practice-oriented nutrition education; a Delphi study among Dutch GPs.

Background: Published guidelines and lists of topics in nutrition education for GPs are affected by practical drawbacks, which prevent them from being easily implemented in vocational training curricula.

Objective: Our aim was to draw up a concise priority list of disease-related nutrition topics reflecting the needs among Dutch GPs for nutrition education geared to everyday practice, which can be used to decide on the main topics and educational content of computer-based instruction.

Methods: This was a two-round Delphi study, using pilot-tested questionnaires carried out among 41 GPs who attended a national CME meeting on nutrition in The Netherlands.

Controlled trial of effect of computer-based nutrition course on knowledge and practice of general practitioner trainees.

Background: Nutrition education is not an integral part of either undergraduate or postgraduate medical education. Computer-based instruction on nutrition might be an attractive and appropriate tool to fill this gap.

Objective: The study objective was to assess the degree to which computer-based instruction on nutrition improves factual knowledge and practice behavior of general practitioner (GP) trainees.