Factors affecting clinician educator encouragement of routine HIV testing among trainees.

Background: Adoption of CDC recommendations for routine, voluntary HIV screening of all Americans age 13–64 years has been slow. One method to increase adherence to clinical practice guidelines is through medical school and residency training.

Objective: To explore the attitudes, barriers, and behaviors of clinician educators (CEs) regarding advocating routine HIV testing to their trainees.

Provider and practice characteristics associated with use of rapid HIV Testing by general internists.

Background: Rapid HIV testing could increase routine HIV testing. Most previous studies of rapid testing were conducted in acute care settings, and few described the primary care providers' perspective.

Objective: To identify characteristics of general internal medicine physicians with access to rapid HIV testing, and to determine whether such access is associated with differences in HIV-testing practices or perceived HIV-testing barriers.

General internists' beliefs, behaviors, and perceived barriers to routine HIV screening in primary care.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends routine HIV screening in primary care but little is known about general internists' views of this practice. We conducted a national, cross-sectional, Internet-based survey of 446 general internists in 2009 regarding their HIV screening behaviors, beliefs, and perceived barriers to routine HIV screening in outpatient internal medicine practices. Internists' awareness of revised CDC guidelines was high (88%), but only 52% had increased HIV testing, 61% offered HIV screening regardless of risk, and a median 2% (range 0-67%) of their patients were tested in the past month.

Conceptual frameworks in the study of duty hours changes in graduate medical education: a review.

Purpose: Conceptual frameworks are approaches to a research problem that specify key entities and their relationships. The 2009 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on resident duty hours, subsequent studies, and published responses to the report present a variety of conceptual frameworks for the study of the impact of duty hours regulations. The authors sought to identify and describe these conceptual frameworks and their implications.

Outcomes of AIDS Education and Training Center HIV/AIDS skill-building workshops on provider practices.

The Midwest AIDS Training and Education Center (MATEC) implemented a Web-based survey method to measure impact on practitioners of HIV/AIDS skill-building workshops offered in seven midwestern states. Surveys were sent to 2,949 participants from 230 workshops 4-6 weeks after each workshop. Of those surveyed, 631 respondents provided usable data (22.

A randomized trial of pictorial versus prose-based medication information pamphlets.

Objective: The goal of this study was to compare prose and pictorial-based information pamphlets about the medication methotrexate in the domains of free recall, cued recall, comprehension and utility.

Methods: A single blind, randomized trial of picture versus prose-based information pamphlets including 100 participants aged 18-65 years of age, who had not completed high school, could read English, and had no prior knowledge about methotrexate. Superiority of pamphlet type was assessed using immediate free recall, cued recall and comprehension.

Relationship between candidate communication ability and oral certification examination scores.

Context: Structured case-based oral examinations are widely used in medical certifying examinations in the USA. These orals assess the candidate's decision-making skills using real or realistic patient cases. Frequently mentioned but not empirically evaluated is the potential bias introduced by the candidate's communication ability.

Impact of student reflective e-portfolio on medical student advisors.

Background: Little is published about the role of faculty advisors and use of students' e-portfolios.

Purpose: This article reports advisors' observations and understanding about 1st-year students based on information from students' journaling as part of an e-portfolio.

Methods: Data were collected on Blackboard survey module for 8 volunteer advisors at two medical school campuses.

Assessment of faculty perception of content validity of PerioSim, a haptic-3D virtual reality dental training simulator.

Haptic technology (sense of touch) along with 3D-virtual reality (VR) graphics, creating lifelike training simulations, was used to develop a dental training simulator system (PerioSim). This preliminary study was designed to evaluate whether faculty considered PerioSim realistic and useful for training and evaluating basic procedural skills of students. The haptic device employed was a PHANToM and the simulator a Dell Xeon 530 workstation with 3D, VR oral models and instruments viewed on a stereoscopic monitor.

Best practices for assessing competence and performance of the behavioral health workforce.

The need for mechanisms to assess the competence and performance of the behavioral health workforce has received increasing attention. This article reviews strategies used in general medicine and other disciplines for assessing trainees and practitioners. The possibilities and limitations of various approaches are reviewed, and the implications for behavioral health are addressed.

Specialty board certification and clinical outcomes: the missing link.

Purpose: Specialty board certification status is often used as a standard of excellence, but no systematic review has examined the link between certification and clinical outcomes. The authors evaluated published studies tracking clinical outcomes and certification status.

Method: Data sources consisted of studies cited between 1966 and July 1999 in OVID-Medline, psychological abstracts (PsycLit), and the Educational Research Information Clearinghouse (ERIC).