Students Teaching Students: Student-Led Ultrasound Curriculum in Medical School Education.

Introduction With the expanding use of point-of-care ultrasound throughout medical specialties for the rapid bedside assessment integral to patient care, medical schools have sought to incorporate ultrasound education into their curriculum. Second-year medical students (MS2s) at our institution met this demand by forming the Ultrasound Student Instructor Cadre (USSIC), a longitudinal ultrasound curriculum where MS2s teach first-year medical students (MS1s). The objectives of this study were to assess the ultrasound knowledge of medical students and their perceptions of ultrasound incorporation into their medical education.

Spatiotemporal patterns of mercury accumulation in lake sediments of western North America.

For the Western North America Mercury Synthesis, we compiled mercury records from 165 dated sediment cores from 138 natural lakes across western North America. Lake sediments are accepted as faithful recorders of historical mercury accumulation rates, and regional and sub-regional temporal and spatial trends were analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistics. Mercury accumulation rates in sediments have increased, on average, four times (4×) from 1850 to 2000 and continue to increase by approximately 0.

Canada's Veterans independence program: a pioneer of "aging at home".

The Veterans Independence Program (VIP) was developed in the late 1970s to promote the independence and aging at home of Second World War veterans. This paper describes VIP's origins, core services and its service-delivery approach. It also summarizes program expenditures and client trends, presents the results of research studies of program impact and effectiveness and discusses lessons learned and best practices.

Health care management competencies: identifying the GAPs.

This study examines issues around health care management competencies, as perceived by senior managers. A combination of questionnaire survey, focus group and in-depth interview methods was used to ascertain views on the importance of various competencies, current competency levels and thus the deficiencies or "GAPs." GAPs are greatest at the frontlines, where managers are generally appointed from clinical roles.

A measure of daily distress in practising medicine.

Objective: Existing measures of stress either focus on burnout or frustration and fatigue factors, often referred to as job strain. The objectives of this study were to: establish a reliable measure of distress that is sensitive enough to identify job strain at lower levels of distress and risk of burnout at higher levels of distress; and document levels of distress among the major medical specialties and across varying patterns of clinical practice.

Methods: A stratified cross-sectional survey of physicians in Canada was conducted in 2004.