The End of Step 2 CS Should Be the Beginning of a New Approach to Clinical Skills Assessment.

The discontinuation of the United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 2 Clinical Skills (CS) in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic marked the end of a decades-long debate about the utility and value of the exam. For all its controversy, the implementation of Step 2 CS in 2004 brought about profound changes to the landscape of medical education, altering the curriculum and assessment practices of medical schools to ensure students were prepared to take and pass this licensing exam. Its elimination, while celebrated by some, is not without potential negative consequences.

A deeper look at implicit weight bias in medical students.

The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP, Barnes-Holmes et al. in Psychol Rec 60:527-542, 2010) was utilized as a relatively new tool to measure implicit weight bias in first- and third-year medical students. To date, only two studies (Miller et al.

Electrophysiological properties of the tongue epithelium of the toad Bufo marinus.

The dorsal lingual epithelium from the tongue of the toad Bufo marinus was mounted in an Ussing-type chamber, and the short-circuit current (I(sc)) was measured using a low-noise voltage clamp. With NaCl Ringer bathing the mucosal and serosal surfaces of the isolated tissue, an outwardly directed (mucosa-positive) I(sc) was measured that averaged -10.71+/-0.