Cabbage and Sauerkraut Consumption in Adolescence and Adulthood and Breast Cancer Risk among US-Resident Polish Migrant Women.

Background: Breast cancer (BC) incidence and mortality are lower in Poland than in the United States (US). However, Polish-born migrant women to US approach the higher BC mortality rates of US women. We evaluated the association between consumption of cabbage/sauerkraut foods and BC risk in Polish-born migrants to US.

Student performance on smoking cessation counseling with standardized patients.

Background And Objectives: Gaps in medical school education exist for the leading preventable cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States--cigarette smoking. This report is on an innovative medical student curriculum of smoking cessation with a high-stakes required performance assessment during a third-year clerkship in family medicine addressing the following questions: (1) Can medical students consistently achieve high levels of performance providing smoking cessation advice with standardized patients and (2) Is the performance on standardized patients associated with other concurrent cognitive test performance on comprehensive topics relevant to family medicine?

Methods: From 1997--2002 (Cohort 1), 470 students completed a focused assessment with standardized patients on smoking cessation counseling. From 2003--2007, 277 students completed a revised, complex shared decision making assessment on smoking cessation with standardized patients.

A repurposed tool: the Programme Evaluation SOAP Note.

Context: Doctors have used the subjective-objective-assessment-plan (SOAP) note format to organise data about patient problems and create plans to address each of them. We retooled this into the 'Programme Evaluation SOAP Note', which serves to broaden the clinician faculty member's perspective on programme evaluation to include the curriculum and the system, as well as students.

Methods: The SOAP Note was chosen as the method for data recording because of its familiarity to clinician-educators and its strengths as a representation of a clinical problem-solving process with elements analogous to educational programme evaluation.

Using a formative simulated patient exercise for curriculum evaluation.

Background: It is not clear that teaching specific history taking, physical examination and patient teaching techniques to medical students results in durable behavioural changes. We used a quasi-experimental design that approximated a randomized double blinded trial to examine whether a Participatory Decision-Making (PDM) educational module taught in a clerkship improves performance on a Simulated Patient Exercise (SPE) in another clerkship, and how this is influenced by the time between training and assessment.

Methods: Third year medical students in an internal medicine clerkship were assessed on their use of PDM skills in an SPE conducted in the second week of the clerkship.

The Web-based worksheet: an opportunity for prompt, consistent, and expert feedback in a community-based hospice experience.

We faced a challenge in providing a consistent high-quality learning experience in hospice care, especially because our community-based medical school has students rotating in hospices in six separated communities and the number of faculty with expertise in palliative care is limited. To address these concerns, a Web-based worksheet with interaction with a central campus faculty member was designed for use in a hospice module in a family practice clerkship.

Medical students, clinical preventive services, and shared decision-making.

Objective: Improving access to preventive care requires addressing patient, provider, and systems barriers. Patients often lack knowledge or are skeptical about the importance of prevention. Physicians feel that they have too little time, are not trained to deliver preventive services, and are concerned about the effectiveness of prevention.