Author: Brian S McGowan, PhD

ABSTRACT: A critical examination of the time and workload in… [Med Teach. 2012] – PubMed – NCBI

Abstract
Background: Although there is increasing pressure on Universities to implement e-learning, this ‘glorious revolution’ has been met with disappointing results and universities have struggled to engage academic staff, who are major stakeholders, with its use. Although literature suggests online teaching adds to traditional faculty workload, information surrounding the actual ‘cost’ to individuals is sparse.

via A critical examination of the time and workload in… [Med Teach. 2012] – PubMed – NCBI.

Continue Reading

ABSTRACT: Impact of interactive web-based education… [J Med Internet Res. 2012] – PubMed – NCBI

Abstract
BACKGROUND:
The effects of various educational strategies have been examined in continuing medical education. Web-based learning has emerged as an alternative to ordinary classroom lessons.
OBJECTIVE:
To investigate whether an interactive Web-based course including personal guidance via email or cellular phone texting may be used to improve practice behavior of general practitioners in the management of atopic dermatitis.

via Impact of interactive web-based education… [J Med Internet Res. 2012] – PubMed – NCBI.

Continue Reading

RESOURCE: Should we be more short term in our thinking about medical education?

“George Miller famously said in the context of medical education that, “assessment drives learning,” and Richard Hays in a different take on the same subject said, “if assessment drives learning, then let’s ensure that it drives learning in the right direction.” Both quotes emphasise the importance of assessment in medical education.”

via BMJ Group blogs: BMJ » Blog Archive » Kieran Walsh: Should we be more short term in our thinking about medical education?.

Continue Reading

Doctors, Like Their Patients, Use Google for Health Information – Health Blog – WSJ

“When doctors were asked how often they used certain sources to gain information used to diagnose, treat and care for patients, 68% said they “frequently” consulted professional journals and 60% said the same about colleagues. And just under half — 46% — said general web browsers. Conferences and events and online free services like WebMD were each cited by 42% of respondents as frequent sources of information.”

via Doctors, Like Their Patients, Use Google for Health Information – Health Blog – WSJ.

Continue Reading

RESOURCE: New social network, developed solely for members of medical school community, goes live this week

“Once users have activated their accounts by logging into CAP for the first time (at med.stanford.edu/profiles/), they can start using the new system to post updates, check what others are doing and build a network of colleagues. The range of collaboration features in CAP will be familiar to those who are already active on existing social networks.

Continue Reading

RESOURCE: How associations can use social media to build influence and increase their reach | SmartBlogs SmartBlogs

“The way for associations to grow their membership is to have a thriving open community around them where stakeholders (members and non-members, who care about what they care about) are able and willing to share the love with their individual networks. In order to do that, they need to be fully part of that community; they need to be present in the obvious outposts where their members are (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn…); they need to make sure their home base websites are mobile-friendly; they need to make it easy.”

via How associations can use social media to build influence and increase their reach | SmartBlogs SmartBlogs.

Continue Reading

RESOURCE: Why the CME community is lacking in its use of social media

“Along the same lines as using HIT, a recent article looked at ways for health care providers to adopt the use of social media for health care related activities. Specifically, Brian S. McGowan, PhD, noted that the continuing medical education (CME) community has not “fully adopted the use of social media for its activities—yet.”

via Why the CME community is lacking in its use of social media.

Continue Reading

RESOURCE: Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education

It’s not easy to acknowledge that everything we’ve learned about how to pay attention means that we’ve been missing everything else. It’s not easy for us rational, competent, confident types to admit that the very key to our success—our ability to pinpoint a problem and solve it, an achievement honed in all those years in school and beyond—may be exactly what limits us. For more than a hundred years, we’ve been training people to see in a particularly individual, deliberative way. No one ever told us that our way of seeing excluded everything else.

via Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Continue Reading

RESOURCE: How Doctors Could Rescue Health Care by Arnold Relman | The New York Review of Books

“The US is facing a major crisis in the cost of health care. Corrected for inflation, health expenditures in the public sector are nearly doubling each decade, and those in the private sector are increasing even more rapidly. According to virtually all economists, this financial burden, which is now consuming about 17 percent of our entire economic output (far more than in any other country), cannot be sustained much longer. The federal share, including payments for Medicare and Medicaid, was 23 percent of the national budget in 2009 and is a prime cause of the deficit.”

via How Doctors Could Rescue Health Care by Arnold Relman | The New York Review of Books.

Continue Reading

RESOURCE: Lower Costs and Better Care for Neediest Patients : The New Yorker

“If Camden, New Jersey, becomes the first American community to lower its medical costs, it will have a murder to thank. At nine-fifty on a February night in 2001, a twenty-two-year-old black man was shot while driving his Ford Taurus station wagon through a neighborhood on the edge of the Rutgers University campus. The victim lay motionless in the street beside the open door on the driver’s side, as if the car had ejected him. A neighborhood couple, a physical therapist and a volunteer firefighter, approached to see if they could help, but police waved them back.”

via Lower Costs and Better Care for Neediest Patients : The New Yorker.

Continue Reading