Phenomenographic study of basic science understanding-senior medical students' conceptions of fatigue.

Introduction: Helping students learn to apply their newly learned basic science knowledge to clinical situations is a long-standing challenge for medical educators. This study aims to describe how medical students' knowledge of the basic sciences is construed toward the end of their medical curriculum, focusing on how senior medical students explain the physiology of a given scenario. Methods A group of final-year medical students from two universities was investigated.

Parents' expectations about participating in antenatal parenthood education classes.

Our objective was to assess parents' expectations about participating in antenatal parenthood education classes and to determine whether their expectations might be related to gender, age, and educational level. Data from 1,117 women and 1,019 partners residing in three cities in Sweden were collected with a questionnaire in a cross-sectional study. Participants believed that antenatal education classes would help them to feel more secure as parents and to be better oriented toward childbirth.

Integrating virtual patients into courses: follow-up seminars and perceived benefit.

Context:   The use of virtual patients (VPs) suggests promising effects on student learning. However, currently empirical data on how best to use VPs in practice are scarce. More knowledge is needed regarding aspects of integrating VPs into a course, of which student acceptance is one key issue.

How to think about interprofessional competence: a metacognitive model.

Different professions meet and work together in teams every day in health and social care. To identify and deliver the best quality of care for the patient, teamwork should be both professionally and interprofessionally competent. How can enhanced education prepare teamworkers to be both professionally and interprofessionally competent? To achieve interprofessional skills and design effective interprofessional curricula, there is a need for metacognitive frameworks focusing on the relationship between theories and the problem-solving process as well as the structure and content of professional competence.

What does it mean to be a mentor in medical education?

Background: Mentor programmes are becoming increasingly common in undergraduate education. However, the meaning attached to being a mentor varies significantly.

Aim: The aim of this study is to explore how teachers in medical and dental education understand their role as mentors.

Experiencing virtual patients in clinical learning: a phenomenological study.

Computerised virtual patients (VPs) are increasingly being used in medical education. With more use of this technology, there is a need to increase the knowledge of students' experiences with VPs. The aim of the study was to elicit the nature of virtual patients in a clinical setting, taking the students' experience as a point of departure.

What does it mean to be a good teacher and clinical supervisor in medical education?

The aim of this study was to describe the different ways medical teachers understand what constitutes a good teacher and a good clinical supervisor and what similarities and differences they report between them. Data was gathered through interviews with 39 undergraduate teachers at a medical university. The transcripts were analysed using a phenomenographic approach.

Interprofessional learning as a means of enhancing professional competence.

This paper explores some core features of interprofessional learning (IPL) and provides an example from the Swedish context. At Linköping university IPL was made an integral part of the problem based learning (PBL) programs that were implemented in 1986 at the Faculty of health sciences. A description of how the IPL strand is designed and some conclusions from evaluation studies are as well provided.

Being a mentor for undergraduate medical students enhances personal and professional development.

Background: There is increasing evidence of the positive effects of mentoring in medical undergraduate programmes, but as far as we know, no studies on the effects for the mentors have yet been described in the field of medicine.

Aim: This study aims to evaluate an undergraduate mentor programme from the mentors' perspective, focusing particularly on the effect of mentorship, the relationships between mentoring and teaching and the mentors' perceived professional and personal development.

Methods: Data was gathered through a questionnaire to all 83 mentors (response rate 75%) and semi-structured interviews with a representative sample of 10 mentors.

Does an outcome-based approach to continuing medical education improve physicians' competences in rational prescribing?

Background: Continuing medical education (CME) is compulsory in Iran, and traditionally it is lecture-based, which is mostly not successful. Outcome-based education has been proposed for CME programs.

Aim: To evaluate the effectiveness of an outcome-based educational intervention with a new approach based on outcomes and aligned teaching methods, on knowledge and skills of general physicians (GPs) working in primary care compared with a concurrent CME program in the field of "Rational prescribing".

The anatomy of learning anatomy.

The experience of clinical teachers as well as research results about senior medical students' understanding of basic science concepts has much been debated. To gain a better understanding about how this knowledge-transformation is managed by medical students, this work aims at investigating their ways of setting about learning anatomy. Second-year medical students were interviewed with a focus on their approach to learning and their way of organizing their studies in anatomy.

Twenty years experiences of interprofessional education in Linkoping--ground-breaking and sustainable.

A pioneering and ground-breaking effort to organize interprofessional education (IPE) was initiated in 1986 at the Faculty of Health Sciences at Linkoping University in Sweden. The so-called "Linkoping IPE model" has now yielded practical experience and development of curricula for over 20 years. The basic idea of this model is that it is favorable for the development of students' own professional identity to meet other health and social professions already into their undergraduate studies.

Interprofessional and problem-based learning: a marriage made in heaven?

This paper explores interprofessional learning (IPL) and whether it would profit from a more systematic merger with problem-based learning (PBL). IPL is based on the idea of bringing together knowledge from the different health professions as they interact with each other for better health care. PBL springs from the idea of bringing learning closer to the application of knowledge in every day life.

A comparison of experiences of training emergency care in military exercises and competences among conscript nurses with different levels of education.

The military emergency care education of nurses is primarily concerned with the treatment of soldiers with combat-related injuries. Even though great progress has been made in military medicine, there is still the pedagogical question of what emergency care education for military nurses should contain and how it should be taught. The aim of this study was to describe and compare experiences of training emergency care in military exercises among conscript nurses with different levels of education.

The criteria nurses use in assessing acute trauma in military emergency care.

Emergency medical care for seriously injured patients in war or warlike situations is highly important when it comes to soldiers' survival and morale. The Swedish Armed Forces sends nurses, who have limited experience of caring for injured personnel in the field, on a variety of international missions. The aim of this investigation was to identify the kind of criteria nurses rely on when assessing acute trauma and what factors are affecting the emergency care of injured soldiers.

To be and to have a critical friend in medical teaching.

Background: In order to stimulate reflection and continuous professional development, a model of critical friends evaluating each other was introduced in medical education.

Objective: To investigate whether the critical friend concept can serve as a pragmatic model for evaluation of medical teachers and as a fruitful tool for enhancing self-knowledge and professional development among medical educators.

Methods: Three pairs of critical friends were formed, consisting of experienced medical teachers (n = 6) at the Karolinska Institutet.

Applying phenomenography in nursing research.

Aims: This paper examines phenomenography, a research approach designed to answer certain questions about how people make sense of their experience. The research approach, developed within educational research, is a content-related approach investigating the different qualitative ways in which people make sense of the world around them. The outcomes of phenomenographic research are different content-related categories describing the differences in other people's ways of experiencing and conceiving their world.

Refusing to be ill: a longitudinal study of patients' experiences of asthma/allergy.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to search for a deeper understanding of the ways patients with asthma/allergy experience their illness situation.

Method: Thirty patients with a history of airway symptoms on allergen exposure and a positive skin prick test were included in the study. They took part in open-ended interviews in their homes twice at an interval of eight years, according to the phenomenographic approach.

Changing Primary Care Doctors' Conceptions - A Qualitative Approach to Evaluating an Intervention.

Objective: To describe conceptions of the management of hyperlipidaemia and assess changes in conceptions after an educational intervention.- Setting and subjects: Primary care in Sweden. Twenty doctors at community health centres.