Vulnerabilities in clinician-parent exchanges and the cascade of communication traps: a review.

This review considers parent-clinician interactions that are associated with vulnerabilities in communication and what we refer to as 'communication traps'. Communication traps are defined by high-stress situations with affect-laden subject matter that can lead to progressively dysfunctional communications/exchanges that are avoidable. While this framework was developed in neonatology, it can be applied to other clinical practices.

Persuasive Features of Scientific Explanations: Explanatory Schemata of Physical and Psychosocial Phenomena.

Explanations are central to understanding the causal relationships between entities within the environment. Instead of examining basic heuristics and schemata that inform the acceptance or rejection of scientific explanations, recent studies have predominantly examined complex explanatory models. In the present study, we examined which essential features of explanatory schemata can account for phenomena that are attributed to domain-specific knowledge.

Dissociating affective and cognitive dimensions of uncertainty by altering regulatory focus.

Cognitive uncertainty is evidenced across learning, memory, and decision-making tasks. Uncertainty has also been examined in studies of positive affect and preference by manipulating stimulus presentation frequency. Despite the extensive research in both of these areas, there has been little systematic study into the relationship between affective and cognitive uncertainty.

Performance monitoring during categorization with and without prior knowledge: A comparison of confidence calibration indices with the certainty criterion.

Subjective confidence reports are used in numerous research paradigms to examine the extent to which participants are aware of their performance in a task. By examining the discrepancy between objective performance and subjective confidence ratings, inferences can be made about the conditions in which participants have greater explicit knowledge of the representations and processes used to complete a task. In the current study, we examined the effects of prior knowledge on subjective assessments of performance using a categorisation task wherein lists of features that defined exemplars shared latent feature associations on the basis of prior knowledge or had no prior associations.

Testing a Communication Assessment Tool for Ethically Sensitive Scenarios: Protocol of a Validation Study.

Background: Although well-designed instruments to assess communication during medical interviews and complex encounters exist, assessment tools that differentiate between communication, empathy, decision-making, and moral judgment are needed to assess different aspects of communication during situations defined by ethical conflict. To address this need, we developed an assessment tool that differentiates competencies associated with practice in ethically challenging situations. The competencies are grouped into three distinct categories: communication skills, civility and respectful behavior, clinical and ethical judgment and decision-making.

Subjective awareness of ultrasound expertise development: individual experience as a determinant of overconfidence.

Medical decision-making requires years of experience in order to develop an adequate level of competence to successfully engage in safe practice. While diagnostic and technical skills are essential, an awareness of the extent and limits of our own knowledge and skills is critical. The present study examines clinicians' subjective awareness in a diagnostic cardiac ultrasound task.

Expert Agreement in the Interpretation of Lung Ultrasound Studies Performed on Mechanically Ventilated Patients.

Objectives: Although lung ultrasound (US) has been shown to have high diagnostic accuracy in patients presenting with acute dyspnea, its precision in critically ill patients is unknown. We investigated common areas of agreement and disagreement by studying 6 experts as they interpreted lung US studies in a cohort of intensive care unit (ICU) patients.

Methods: A previous study by our group asked experts to rate the quality of 150 lung US studies performed by 10 novices in a population of mechanically ventilated patients.

The Assessment of Competency in Thoracic Sonography (ACTS) scale: validation of a tool for point-of-care ultrasound.

Background: The rapid adoption of point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) has created a need to develop assessment tools to ensure that learners can competently use these technologies. In this study, the authors developed and tested a rating scale to assess the quality of point-of-care thoracic ultrasound studies performed by novices. In Phase 1, the Assessment of Competency in Thoracic Sonography (ACTS) scale was developed based on structured interviews with subject matter experts.

Beyond Fidelity: Deconstructing the Seductive Simplicity of Fidelity in Simulator-Based Education in the Health Care Professions.

Fidelity has become a ubiquitous feature of discourse in simulation studies. Recent studies have highlighted the often ambiguous and contradictory manner in which fidelity has been defined, with each definition emphasizing different physical and functional features of simulation. We suggest that regarding fidelity as an objective property of a simulation obscures the interactive nature of the educator-learner relationship and should be abandoned.

Outcomes from extensive training in critical care echocardiography: Identifying the optimal number of practice studies required to achieve competency.

Purpose: Optimal instruction and assessment of critical care ultrasound (CCUS) skills requires an assessment tool to measure learner competency and changes over time. In this study, a previously published tool was used to monitor the development of critical care echocardiography (CCE) competencies, the attainment of performance plateaus, and the extent to which previous experience influenced learning.

Materials And Methods: A group of experts used the Rapid Assessment of Competency in Echocardiography (RACE) scale to rate a large pool of CCE studies performed by novices in a longitudinal design.

The Rapid Assessment of Competency in Echocardiography Scale: Validation of a Tool for Point-of-Care Ultrasound.

Objectives: Increased use of point-of-care ultrasound (US) requires the development of assessment tools that measure the competency of learners. In this study, we developed and tested a tool to assess the quality of point-of-care cardiac US studies performed by novices.

Methods: In phase 1, the Rapid Assessment of Competency in Echocardiography (RACE) scale was developed on the basis of structured interviews with subject matter experts; the tool was then piloted on a small series of US studies in phase 2.

Psychometrics and its discontents: an historical perspective on the discourse of the measurement tradition.

Psychometrics has recently undergone extensive criticism within the medical education literature. The use of quantitative measurement using psychometric instruments such as response scales is thought to emphasize a narrow range of relevant learner skills and competencies. Recent reviews and commentaries suggest that a paradigm shift might be presently underway.

A reappraisal of the uncanny valley: categorical perception or frequency-based sensitization?

The uncanny valley (UCV) hypothesis describes a non-linear relationship between perceived human-likeness and affective response. The "uncanny valley" refers to an intermediate level of human-likeness that is associated with strong negative affect. Recent studies have suggested that the uncanny valley might result from the categorical perception of human-like stimuli during identification.

Selective attention and subjective confidence calibration.

In the present experiments, failures of selective visual attention were invoked using the B. A. Eriksen and C.