A Call to Action From the California Consortium for the Assessment of Clinical Competence: Making the Case for Regional Collaboration.

The discontinuation of the United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 2 Clinical Skills Examination emphasizes the need for other reliable standardized assessments of medical student clinical skills. For 30 years, the California Consortium for the Assessment of Clinical Competence (CCACC) has collaborated in the development of clinical skills assessments and has become a valuable resource for clinicians, standardized patient educators, psychometricians, and medical educators. There are many merits to strong multi-institutional partnerships, including the integration of data across multiple schools to provide feedback to both students and curricula, pooled test performance statistics for analysis and quality assurance, shared best practices and resources, individual professional development, and opportunities for research and scholarship.

Pediatric Heart Transplantation: Transitioning to Adult Care (TRANSIT): Feasibility of a Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Young-adult heart transplant recipients transferring to adult care are at risk for poor health outcomes. We conducted a pilot randomized controlled trial to determine the feasibility of and to test a transition intervention for young adults who underwent heart transplantation as children and then transferred to adult care.

Methods: Participants were randomized to the transition intervention (4 months long, focused on heart-transplant knowledge, self-care, self-advocacy, and social support) or usual care.

Pediatric Heart Transplantation: Transitioning to Adult Care (TRANSIT): Baseline Findings.

Young adult solid organ transplant recipients who transfer from pediatric to adult care experience poor outcomes related to decreased adherence to the medical regimen. Our pilot trial for young adults who had heart transplant (HT) who transfer to adult care tests an intervention focused on increasing HT knowledge, self-management and self-advocacy skills, and enhancing support, as compared to usual care. We report baseline findings between groups regarding (1) patient-level outcomes and (2) components of the intervention.

Healthcare students interprofessional critical event/disaster response course.

Objective: Numerous disasters confirm the need for critical event training in healthcare professions. However, no single discipline works in isolation and interprofessional learning is recognized as a necessary component. An interprofessional faculty group designed a learning curriculum crossing professional schools.

Effects of ultrasound implementation on physical examination learning and teaching during the first year of medical education.

Objectives: Increasing emphasis has been placed on point-of-care ultrasound in medical school. The overall effects of ultrasound curriculum implementation on the traditional physical examination skills of medical students are still unknown. We studied the effects on the Objective Standardized Clinical Examination (OSCE) scores of year 1 medical students before and after ultrasound curriculum implementation.

Calcineurin inhibitor minimization using sirolimus leads to improved renal function in pediatric heart transplant recipients.

The introduction of cyclosporine revolutionized the practice of immunosuppression for solid organ transplant recipients, and has resulted in a significant increase in survival. While CNI use has been the mainstay of immunosuppressive therapy in pediatric heart transplantation, CNIs have been associated with an increased risk of nephropathy leading to significant morbidity and mortality. We evaluated the effect on renal function of a CNI minimization protocol using SRL in pediatric heart transplant patients with CNI induced renal insufficiency.

Developmental outcomes after pediatric heart transplantation.

Background: Pediatric heart transplantation has now been successfully performed for more than 20 years. As survival rates have improved, more attention is now focused on long-term outcomes.

Methods: This report reviews the literature on developmental outcomes after pediatric heart transplantation.

Cardiac re-transplantation in pediatrics: a multi-institutional study.

Background: Cardiac re-transplantation (re-Tx) among pediatric recipients remains controversial. The purpose of this study is to use the Pediatric Heart Transplant Study (PHTS) database to investigate the incidence of re-Tx and analyze the risk factors and outcomes after transplantation among children.

Methods: The PHTS database was reviewed for all subjects View Article and Find Full Text PDF