Numerical versus narrative: A comparison between methods to measure medical student performance during clinical clerkships.

Background: Medical school evaluations typically rely on both language-based narrative descriptions and psychometrically converted numeric scores to convey performance to the grading committee. We evaluated inter-rater reliability and correlation of numeric versus narrative evaluations for students on their Neurology Clerkship.

Design/methods: 50 Neurology Clerkship in-training evaluation reports completed by their residents and faculty members at the University of Rochester School of Medicine were dissected into narrative and numeric components.

Eloquent silences: A musical and lexical analysis of conversation between oncologists and their patients.

Objective: Silences in doctor-patient communication can be "connectional" and communicative, in contrast to silences that indicate awkwardness or distraction. Musical and lexical analyses can identify and characterize connectional silences in consultations between oncologists and patients.

Methods: Two medical students and a professor of voice screened all 1211 silences over 2s in length from 124 oncology office visits.