Development and Assessment of Simulation-Based Point-of-Care Ultrasound Curriculum in Undergraduate Medical Education.

Objectives: Implementation barriers and lack of standardized point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) curricula make the development of effective POCUS curricula and methods of assessment challenging. The authors aim to develop a longitudinal POCUS curriculum through staged intervention. In the first stage, the authors hypothesized that the use of high-fidelity ultrasound simulation during the Internal Medicine clerkship would improve POCUS confidence and knowledge among medical students, minimizing the need for trained faculty.

E-mails in a Psychiatric Practice: Why Patients Send Them and How Psychiatrists Respond.

Context: Little is known about what prompts patients to use e-mail with their physicians and how physicians respond to these e-mails.

Objective: To identify the main reasons why patients e-mail and to learn how psychiatrists manage these e-mails as part of these patients' overall care.

Design: One hundred patient-initiated e-mails to each of two psychiatrists in a group practice were studied retrospectively for primary reason for the e-mail and for psychiatrists' handling of each e-mail.