Simulation is underutilized as a tool to improve healthcare quality and safety despite many examples of its effectiveness to identify and remedy quality and safety problems, improve teamwork, and improve various measures of quality and safety that are important to healthcare organizations, eg, patient safety indicators. We urge quality and safety and simulation professionals to collaborate with their counterparts in their organizations to employ simulation in ways that improve the quality and safety of care of their patients. These collaborations could begin through initiating conversations among the quality and safety and simulation professionals, perhaps using this article as a prompt for discussion, identifying one area in need of quality and safety improvement for which simulation can be helpful, and beginning that work.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSimulation is underutilized as a tool to improve healthcare quality and safety despite many examples of its effectiveness to identify and remedy quality and safety problems, improve teamwork, and improve various measures of quality and safety that are important to healthcare organizations, eg, patient safety indicators. We urge quality and safety and simulation professionals to collaborate with their counterparts in their organizations to employ simulation in ways that improve the quality and safety of care of their patients. These collaborations could begin through initiating conversations among the quality and safety and simulation professionals, perhaps using this article as a prompt for discussion, identifying one area in need of quality and safety improvement for which simulation can be helpful, and beginning that work.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAs institutions continuously strive to align with the standards set forth within competency-based medical education, there is an increased need to produce evidence of learner achievement in the form of observable behaviors. However, the complexity of healthcare education and clinical environments make it challenging to generate valid and reliable behavioral assessments. In this article, we utilize our interdisciplinary knowledge from the perspectives of experts in medical education, assessment, and academic administration to provide tips to successfully incorporate behavioral assessments into instructional designs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: US child firearm fatality rates have risen since 2013. Child Access Prevention (CAP) laws aimed at reducing minors' access to firearms have existed since the 1980s. However, specific requirements for safe storage of firearms, standards of negligence, and penalties for offenders vary significantly by state, yielding a heterogeneous body of CAP legislation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Simulation is an instructional modality that offers opportunities for assessment across many domains. The American College of Surgeons created the Accredited Education Institutes (AEIs) to build a community of high-quality simulation centers focused around improving surgical education and training. The goals of this project were to identify assessment methods used by AEIs, discuss how these methods align with established assessment frameworks, identify best practices, and provide guidance on best practice implementation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInterprofessional healthcare team function is critical to the effective delivery of patient care. Team members must possess teamwork competencies, as team function impacts patient, staff, team, and healthcare organizational outcomes. There is evidence that team training is beneficial; however, consensus on the optimal training content, methods, and evaluation is lacking.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdverse birth outcomes, such as early gestational age and low birth weight, can have lasting effects on morbidity and mortality, with impacts that persist into adulthood. Identifying the maternal factors that contribute to adverse birth outcomes in the next generation is thus a priority. Epigenetic clocks, which have emerged as powerful tools for quantifying biological aging and various dimensions of physiological dysregulation, hold promise for clarifying relationships between maternal biology and infant health, including the maternal factors or states that predict birth outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Due to the pandemic, we restructured our medical student knot-tying simulation to a virtual format. This study evaluated curriculum feasibility and effectiveness.
Methods: Over 4 weeks, second-year medical students ( = 229) viewed a video tutorial (task demonstration, errors, scoring) and self-practiced to proficiency (no critical errors, < 2 min) using at-home suture kits (simple interrupted suture, instrument tie, penrose drain model).
IEEE Trans Med Robot Bionics
November 2021
Surgical skill directly affects surgical procedure outcomes; thus, effective training is needed to ensure satisfactory results. Many objective assessment metrics have been developed that provide the trainee with descriptive feedback about their performance however, often lack feedback on how to improve performance. The most effective training method is one that is intuitive, easy to understand, personalized to the user,and provided in a timely manner.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Arranging hospice services from the Emergency Department (ED) can be difficult due to physician discomfort, time constraints, and the intensity of care coordination needed. We report patient and visit characteristics associated with successful transition from the ED directly to hospice.
Methods: Setting: Academic ED with 82,000 annual visits.
The host macrophage response to implants has shown to be affected by tissue location and physio-pathological conditions of the patient. Success in immunomodulatory strategies is thus predicated on the proper understanding of the macrophage populations participating on each one of these contexts. The present study uses an in vivo implantation model to analyze how immunomodulation via an IL-4 eluting implant affects distinct macrophage populations at the tissue-implant interface and how this may affect downstream regenerative processes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe American College of Surgeons launched the Accredited Education Institutes (ACS-AEIs) in 2005 to create a network of simulation centers to offer the highest-quality surgical education and training and to pursue cutting-edge scholarship. Specific standards and criteria were developed to accredit simulation centers, and decisions made based on the application, site surveyor visit, and ACS-AEI Accreditation Committee review. In addition to granting accreditation and providing recommendations for improvement, site surveyors and the Accreditation Committee identified best practices defined as areas far exceeding the accreditation standards or novel methods of advancing high-quality, impactful education.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Europa mission approved in 2019 is still in the development phase. It is designed to conduct a detailed reconnaissance of that moon of Jupiter as it could possibly support life as we know it. This article is based on a top-down approach (mission → system → subsystems → components) to model the probability of mission failure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an effective treatment for medically refractory Parkinson's disease (PD). During DBS surgery, intraoperative testing is performed to confirm optimal lead placement by determining the stimulation thresholds for symptom improvement and side effects. However, the reliability of intraoperative testing in predicting distant postoperative thresholds is unknown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School (UT Southwestern) developed a required, pass/fail Step 1 preparation course in conjunction with their new curriculum to support students with structure, encouragement, and accountability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRoutine antenatal Level II ( anomaly scan) scanning done in a 36-year-old pregnant patient with no history of birth defects in the previous pregnancy showed a 19 weeks fetus with deformed cerebral ventricular cavities, fusion of thalami and craniofacial abnormalities. Diagnosis of semilobar holoprosencephaly with midline cleft lip-cleft palate was given and termination of the ongoing pregnancy was advised in view of the unfavourable outcome.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Our simulation center, supported by four departments (Surgery, OB/GYN, Urology, and Anesthesiology), is accredited as a comprehensive Accredited Educational Institute (AEI) and is now expanding to accommodate all departments on campus.
Methods: A 61-point questionnaire was administered to 44 stakeholders, representing all of UME and GME. Data were compared for AEI vs.
Int J Comput Assist Radiol Surg
April 2019
Purpose: Automatic skill evaluation is of great importance in surgical robotic training. Extensive research has been done to evaluate surgical skill, and a variety of quantitative metrics have been proposed. However, these methods primarily use expert selected features which may not capture latent information in movement data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnnu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc
July 2018
A gold standard in surgical skill rating and evaluation is direct observation, which a group of experts rate trainees based on a likert scale, by observing their performance during a surgical task. This method is time and resource intensive. To alleviate this burden, many studies have focused on automatic surgical skill assessment; however, the metrics suggested by the literature for automatic evaluation do not capture the stylistic behavior of the user.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: As morbidity and mortality from traumatic orthopaedic injuries continues to rise, increased research is being conducted on how to best predict complications in at risk patients. Recently, frailty indices have been validated in a variety of surgical subspecialties as predictors of morbidity and mortality. However, the vast majority of research has been conducted on geriatric patient populations, with little evidence on patients who are chronologically young.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Comput Assist Radiol Surg
July 2018
Objective: Quantitative assessment of surgical skills is an important aspect of surgical training; however, the proposed metrics are sometimes difficult to interpret and may not capture the stylistic characteristics that define expertise. This study proposes a methodology for evaluating the surgical skill, based on metrics associated with stylistic adjectives, and evaluates the ability of this method to differentiate expertise levels.
Methods: We recruited subjects from different expertise levels to perform training tasks on a surgical simulator.
Penumbral perfusion is critical to brain viability. Proximal arterial occlusion and deep brain stroke has variable effect on cortical dysfunction. Cortical microvessel collaterals may be recruited and at times sufficient for partial parenchymal perfusion.
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