Emergency manual implementation: can brief simulation-based or staff trainings increase familiarity and planned clinical use?

Background: Emergency manuals (EMs)-context-relevant sets of cognitive aids such as crisis checklists-are useful tools to enhance perioperative patient care. Studies in high-hazard industries demonstrate that humans, regardless of expertise, do not optimally retrieve or deploy key knowledge under stress. EM use has been shown in both health care simulation studies and other industries to help expert teams effectively manage critical events.

Simulation-based mastery learning with deliberate practice improves clinical performance in spinal anesthesia.

Introduction. Properly performing a subarachnoid block (SAB) is a competency expected of anesthesiology residents. We aimed to determine if adding simulation-based deliberate practice to a base curriculum improved performance of a SAB.

Nurses' immediate response to the fall of a hospitalized patient: a comparison of actions and cognitions of experienced and novice nurses.

Background: Falls represent a significant threat to patient safety for hospitalized patients throughout the world. Little is known, however, regarding nurses' immediate responses to the discovery of a fallen patient.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to perform an experimental examination of experienced and novice nurses' reaction to the discovery of a fallen patient who has sustained a closed head injury.

Strategies may mediate heritable aspects of memory performance: a twin study.

Objective: This study examined use of strategies by twins during cognitive tasks to determine the effects of strategy-use on estimates of heritability.

Background: Performance on many cognitive tasks has been found to be more similar for monozygotic (MZ) than dizygotic (DZ) twins. The cognitive mechanisms mediating these similarities are largely unknown.

Toward a science of exceptional achievement: attaining superior performance through deliberate practice.

Exceptional performance is frequently attributed to genetic differences in talent. Since Sir Francis Galton's book, Hereditary Genius, many scientists have cited heritable factors that set limits of performance and only allow some individuals to attain exceptional levels. However, thus far these accounts have not explicated the causal processes involved in the activation and expression of unique genes in DNA that lead to the emergence of distinctive physiological attributes and cognitive capacities (innate talent).

Do clinical clerks provide candidates with adequate formative assessment during Objective Structured Clinical Examinations?

Context: Various research studies have examined the question of whether expert or non-expert raters, faculty or students, evaluators or standardized patients, give more reliable and valid summative assessments of performance on Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs). Less studied has been the question of whether or not non-faculty raters can provide formative feedback that allows students to take advantage of the educational opportunity that OSCEs provide. This question is becoming increasingly important, however, as the strain on faculty resources increases.