Adding guidance to deliberate reflection improves medical student's diagnostic accuracy.

Context: Diagnostic competence in students is a major medical education goal. Adding instructional guidelines to prompt deliberate reflection fosters medical students' diagnostic proficiency. This study investigates the effects of this teaching strategy on diagnostic accuracy in solving clinical cases of different complexity levels by novice and senior students.

Clinical course of 63 children with hereditary spherocytosis: a retrospective study.

Background: Hereditary spherocytosis (HS) is an inherited hemolytic anemia that is caused by deficiency or dysfunction of erythrocyte cytoskeletal proteins.

Aim: The aim of this study was to describe the clinical course of hereditary spherocytosis in patients treated in the Pediatric Hematology Unit, Hospital das Clínicas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.

Methods: Sixty-three under 16-year-old patients with hereditary spherocytosis were retrospectively evaluated between January 1988 and December 2007.