Publications by authors named "Sophia Fitzgerald-Smith"

Background: Health-care workers constitute a high-risk population for acquisition of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Capacity for acute diagnosis via PCR testing was limited for individuals with mild to moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection in the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and a substantial proportion of health-care workers with suspected infection were not tested. We aimed to investigate the performance of point-of-care and laboratory serology assays and their utility in late case identification, and to estimate SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence.

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Background: What subjects UK medical schools teach, what ways they teach subjects, and how much they teach those subjects is unclear. Whether teaching differences matter is a separate, important question. This study provides a detailed picture of timetabled undergraduate teaching activity at 25 UK medical schools, particularly in relation to problem-based learning (PBL).

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Article Synopsis
  • Medical schools in the UK exhibit significant differences in various aspects, including teaching styles, entry criteria, and postgraduate performance, prompting the MedDifs study to explore these variations.
  • The study analyzed aggregated data from 29 medical schools, focusing on 50 different measures such as curricular influences, student satisfaction, and specialty training outcomes.
  • Results indicate that while differences in medical schools are consistent over time, schools using problem-based learning (PBL) tend to have lower postgraduate performance despite higher satisfaction with feedback, suggesting a complex relationship between teaching methods and outcomes.
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Atherosclerosis is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality globally. Many animal models have been developed to study atherosclerosis, and permit experimental conditions, diet and environmental risk factors to be carefully controlled. Pathophysiological changes can be produced using genetic or pharmacological means to study the harmful consequences of different interventions.

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