Storytelling: A learning tool to enhance medical students' empathy, attentive listening, clinical curiosity and reflection.

Listening to stories of sickness lies at the heart of the patient-doctor relationship. Storytelling serves as a powerful learning tool fostering empathy, attentive listening, clinical curiosity and reflection, key elements of narrative competence. The patient's story, their history, forms the fundamental core of diagnosis, and their emotions are central to crafting appropriate treatment plans that address their true concerns.

Plasma concentrations of thioredoxin, thioredoxin reductase and peroxiredoxin-4 can identify high risk patients and predict outcome in patients with acute coronary syndrome: A clinical observation.

Background: Oxidative stress is a pathological feature of acute coronary syndrome (ACS), a complex disease with varying clinical outcomes. Surrogate biomarkers of oxidative stress including, peroxiredoxin-2 (PRDX2), PRDX4, thioredoxin (TRX) and thioredoxin reductase (TRXR) were measured in ACS patients at presentation and follow-up, to assess their clinical utility in diagnosis and risk stratification.

Methods: Plasma from 145 participants (80 ACS and 65 healthy) at diagnosis, 1-3 month (first) and 6-month follow-up (second) was analysed by ELISA.

Key subphenotypes of bipolar disorder are differentially associated with polygenic liabilities for bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and major depressive disorder.

Bipolar disorder (BD) features heterogenous clinical presentation and course of illness. It remains unclear how subphenotypes associate with genetic loadings of BD and related psychiatric disorders. We investigated associations between the subphenotypes and polygenic risk scores (PRS) for BD, schizophrenia, and major depressive disorder (MDD) in two BD cohorts from Sweden (N = 5180) and the UK (N = 2577).

Just-in-time interprofessional training: lessons from the NHS Nightingale London.

The Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic placed significant pressure on healthcare systems across the globe, with many clinicians redeployed in unfamiliar specialties or disciplines. In England, a just-in-time interprofessional training and education programme was rapidly established to upskill nearly 2,500 people who volunteered to work at the NHS Nightingale London Hospital. Of the 488 respondents in our evaluation, representing a 20% response rate, most felt confident and safe to start work in NHS Nightingale London.

Comparison of the scope of practice of physician associates with that of healthcare professions with prescribing responsibility from point of registration.

Physician associates (PAs) have been practising in the UK since the mid-2000s and are due to be regulated by the General Medical Council (GMC) after summer 2024. Presently, PAs are not able to prescribe prescription-only medication (POM), but this is anticipated to change following GMC regulation. This research compared the scope of practice (SoP) of PAs with other healthcare professionals who have some level of prescribing authority from the point of registration, to establish the need for PAs to prescribe POM and to explore which of the prescribing authority options would fit the PA role.

Integration of respiratory physiology and clinical reasoning in the early years of a medical curriculum: engaging with students in a large classroom setting.

Medical graduates are expected to apply scientific principles and explain the processes underlying common and important diseases. Evidence shows that integrated medical curricula, which deliver biomedical science within the context of clinical cases, facilitate student learning in preparation for practice. However, research has also shown that the student's perception of their knowledge can be lower in integrated compared to traditional courses.

Perceptions of faculty toward "social obligation" at an Indian medical school.

Background: The World Health Organization has defined social accountability of medical schools as "…obligation to direct their education, research, and service activities toward addressing the priority health concerns of the community." The current study looked at the extent to which the concept was understood in an Indian medical school, exploring how faculty perceived and were involved in directing a response to the social obligation of their medical school.

Methods: Seventeen semi-structured audio-recorded interviews were conducted by purposive sampling of faculty from different disciplines.