Distributed Medical Education (DME) in psychiatry: perspectives on facilitators, obstacles, and factors affecting psychiatrists' willingness to engage in teaching activities.

Background: Distributed Medical Education (DME), a decentralized model focused on smaller cities and communities, has been implemented worldwide to bridge the gap in psychiatric education. Faculty engagement in teaching activities such as clinical teaching, supervision, and examinations is a crucial aspect of DME sites. Implementing or expanding DME sites requires careful consideration to identify enablers that contribute to success and barriers that need to be addressed.

Exploring Current Practices, Needs, and Barriers for Expanding Distributed Medical Education and Scholarship in Psychiatry: Protocol for an Environmental Scan Using a Formal Information Search Approach and Explanatory Design.

Background: Distributed medical education (DME) offers manifold benefits, such as increased training capacity, enhanced clinical learning, and enhanced rural physician recruitment. Engaged faculty are pivotal to DME's success, necessitating efforts from the academic department to promote integration into scholarly and research activities. Environmental scanning has been used to gather, analyze, and apply information for strategic planning purposes.

Viewing faculty development through an organizational lens: Sharing lessons learned.

Introduction: Faculty Development (FD) plays a key role in supporting education, especially during times of change. The effectiveness of FD often depends upon organizational factors, indicating a need for a deeper appreciation of the role of institutional context. How do organizational factors constrain or enhance the capacity of faculty developers to fulfil their mandates?

Methods: Using survey research methodology, data from a survey of FD leaders at Canadian medical schools were analyzed using Bolman and Deal's four frames: Symbolic, Political, Structural, and Human Resource (HR).

Educating Residents About Cannabis: Results of a Needs Assessment.

Objective: Cannabis use by people receiving mental health services is increasingly common, yet many psychiatrists have limited knowledge about the pharmacology of cannabis or its clinical effects. Though clearly relevant to residency training, there is little information on unmet needs and current teaching practices to guide educators who wish to develop a cannabis curriculum. To address this, the authors interviewed key informants and surveyed Canadian psychiatry program directors and residents about cannabis education seeking to determine appropriate content and approaches to inform curriculum development.

Assessing Clinical Faculty Understanding of Statistical Terms Used to Measure Treatment Effects and Their Application to Teaching.

Introduction: Understanding of statistical terms used to measure treatment effect is important for evidence-informed medical teaching and practice. We explored knowledge of these terms among clinical faculty who instruct and mentor a continuum of medical learners to inform medical faculty learning needs.

Methods: This was a mixed methods study that used a questionnaire to measure a health professional's understanding of measures of treatment effect and a focus group to explore perspectives on learning, applying, and teaching these terms.

Remediation practices in Canadian psychiatry clerkships.

Objectives: There is a lack of information regarding interventions for undergraduate students at Canadian medical schools who require remediation during their psychiatric training. The need for a theoretical framework to guide remediation has been identified. In this study, we sought to characterize remediation taking place in undergraduate psychiatry education, particularly during clerkship.

Understanding, teaching and assessing the elements of the CanMEDS Professional Role: canadian program directors' views.

Background: Physicians are required to maintain and sustain professional roles during their careers, making the Professional Role an important component of postgraduate education. Despite this, this role remains difficult to define, teach and assess.

Objective: To (a) understand what program directors felt were key elements of the CanMEDS Professional Role and (b) identify the teaching and assessment methods they used.

Changing concepts of neuroanatomy teaching in medical education.

Background: Anatomy teaching is often described as foundational in the education of physicians, but in recent years there has been increasing pressure on teachers of neuroanatomy to justify its place in the curriculum.

Summary: This article examines theoretical assumptions that have traditionally influenced the neuroanatomy curriculum and explains how evolution of thought in the field of medical education has led to a shift in how the pedagogy of neuroanatomy is conceptualized.

Conclusions: The widespread adoption of competency-based education, the emphasis on outcome-based objectives, patient- and learner-centered approaches, and a renewed interest in humanistic aspects of medical education have all contributed to a changing educational milieu.

Group interventions for patients with cancer and HIV disease: part IV. Clinical and policy recommendations.

Group interventions have assumed a growing role in primary prevention and supportive care for cancer and HIV disease. Earlier sections of this Special Report examined empirical findings for these interventions and provided recommendations for future research. The current section offers brief recommendations for service providers, policymakers, and stakeholders.

Group interventions for patients with cancer and HIV disease: Part III. Moderating variables and mechanisms of action.

Growing evidence supports the value of group interventions for individuals who are at risk for or have developed cancer or HIV disease. However, information is more limited concerning how these services can be delivered in an optimal manner, and what processes contribute to their benefits. Parts I and II of this review examined the efficacy of different interventions for individuals at different phases of illness, ranging from primary prevention to late-stage disease, in both psychosocial and biological domains.

Group interventions for patients with cancer and HIV disease: Part II. Effects on immune, endocrine, and disease outcomes at different phases of illness.

There has been great interest in the potential impact of group interventions on medical outcomes. This article reviews the effects of professionally-led groups on immune activity, neuroendocrine function, and survival among patients with cancer or HIV disease. We examine findings concerning different types of group services at different phases of illness.

Group interventions for patients with cancer and HIV disease: Part I: Effects on psychosocial and functional outcomes at different phases of illness.

Group interventions for individuals facing cancer or HIV disease have drawn considerable attention among researchers and clinicians over the past 20 years. There is growing evidence that group services may be helpful, but which interventions are most effective for participants at which phases in the trajectory of disease has been less clear. Moreover, professionals working in different intervention settings (e.

Decision-making capacity and alcohol abuse: clinical and ethical considerations in personal care choices.

Requests for competency assessment of elderly patients are among the more common referrals that medical and surgical units make to consultation-liaison psychiatrists. Special considerations arise when impairment in cognition, judgment and function arise in the context of substance abuse. At what point during the admission should the evaluation be made? What if the person does well on the cognitive exam but has shown repeated evidence of self-neglect and need for medical care? What role should the medical profession play in mandating that patients give up harmful addictions? In this paper, we describe a case that illustrates these problems, and discuss some of the clinical and ethical considerations involved in the assessment of personal care competence of patients with alcohol abuse, and provide guidelines for these assessments.