Factors affecting the utility of the multiple mini-interview in selecting candidates for graduate-entry medical school.

Context: We wished to determine which factors are important in ensuring interviewers are able to make reliable and valid decisions about the non-cognitive characteristics of candidates when selecting candidates for entry into a graduate-entry medical programme using the multiple mini-interview (MMI).

Methods: Data came from a high-stakes admissions procedure. Content validity was assured by using a framework based on international criteria for sampling the behaviours expected of entry-level students.

Online CME: an effective alternative to face-to-face delivery.

Background: The Pharmacotherapies Accreditation Course (PAC) is a continuing medical education (CME) course designed to prepare practitioners for accreditation as pharmacotherapies prescribers for opioid dependence. The course incorporates a preparation stage, a workshop stage and a clinical placement component. The PAC continues to be successfully delivered in face-to-face mode since 2001.

Conceptions of problem-based learning: the perspectives of students entering a problem-based medical program.

Effective learning in higher education is associated with students' perceptions of clear goals and standards of an educational program. In programs using problem-based learning (PBL), students' conceptions of what PBL is about could determine how well they perceive the clarity of goals and standards of their program. In this study the authors aim to investigate the relationship between the nature of first-year students' conceptions of PBL and their perceptions of the clarity of goals and standards of a graduate-entry, problem-based medical program.

The neurosurgical training curriculum in Australia and New Zealand is changing. Why?

The Neurosurgical Advanced Training curriculum of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) is currently undergoing change. Given the high standard of neurosurgery in Australia and New Zealand, it may be questioned why such change is necessary. However, the curriculum has not kept pace with developments in professional practice, educational practice or educational theory, particularly in the assessment of medical competence and performance.

A model of teaching and learning in the operating theatre.

Introduction: This paper extends the work of an earlier publication by the same author which reported the findings of a case study designed to investigate how medical students learn and are taught in the operating theatre. The earlier paper was descriptive in nature, examining the challenges students face as learners in theatres. These were conceptualised around 3 key domains: the challenge posed by the physical environment; the challenge of the educational task, and the challenge of managing and negotiating a role as a participant in the professional workplace of theatres.

Clinical skills in junior medical officers: a comparison of self-reported confidence and observed competence.

Background: The intern year is a key time for the acquisition of clinical skills, both procedural and cognitive. We have previously described self-reported confidence and experience for a number of clinical skills, finding high levels of confidence among Australian junior doctors. This has never been correlated with an objective measure of competence.

Making the most of learning in the operating theatre: student strategies and curricular initiatives.

Background: Students in medical programmes around the world are required to attend with their patient in the operating theatre, yet little is known about this area of medical education. Most of the published literature on the operating theatre is normative in character, written from the perspective of the surgeon as teacher. This paper, in contrast, reports the student's perspective as learner.

Preparedness for hospital practice among graduates of a problem-based, graduate-entry medical program.

Objective: To compare preparedness for hospital practice between graduates from a problem-based, graduate-entry medical program and those from other programs (undergraduate problem-based and traditional).

Design: Survey of graduates (by mailed questionnaire) and organisers of clinical training (by semistructured interview); results were compared with published results of surveys of graduates from other programs.

Setting And Participants: All graduates of the first intake of the University of Sydney graduate-entry medical program were surveyed at the end of their first intern year (2001), along with the director of clinical training or intern manager at each of the New South Wales hospitals that employed the graduates.