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Author: Brian S McGowan, PhD

ABSTRACT: Advancing Faculty Development in Medical Education: A Systematic Review.

PURPOSE:
To (1) provide a detailed account of the nature and scope of faculty development (FD) programs in medical education, (2) assess the quality of FD studies, and (3) identify in what areas and through what means future research can purposefully build on existing knowledge.
METHOD:
The authors searched MEDLINE, CINAHL, and ERIC for articles reporting evaluations of FD initiatives published between 1989 and 2010. They applied standard systematic review procedures for sifting abstracts, scrutinizing full texts, and abstracting data, including program characteristics, evaluation methods, and outcomes. They used a modified Kirkpatrick model to guide their data abstraction.
RESULTS:
The authors included 22 articles reporting on 21 studies in their review. The most common program characteristics included a series/longitudinal format, intended for individuals, and offered to physicians only. Although the most common aim was to improve teaching effectiveness, several programs had multiple aims, including scholarship and leadership. Program evaluation focused on quantitative approaches. A number of studies employed longitudinal designs and included some follow-up component. Surveys were the most popular data collection method, participants the most common data source, and self-reported behavior changes the most commonly reported outcome.
CONCLUSIONS:
Although the authors’ findings showed some recent expansion in the scope of the FD literature, they also highlighted areas that require further focus and growth. Future research should employ more rigorous evaluation methods, explore the role of interprofessional teams and communities of practice in the workplace, and address how different organizational and contextual factors shape the success of FD programs.

via Advancing Faculty Development in Medical Education:… [Acad Med. 2013] – PubMed – NCBI.

ABSTRACT: Evidence-Based Medicine Training in Undergraduate Medical Education: A Review and Critique of the Literature Published 2006-2011

PURPOSE:To characterize recent evidence-based medicine EBM educational interventions for medical students and suggest future directions for EBM education.METHOD:The authors searched the MEDLINE, Scopus, Educational Resource Information Center, and Evidence-Based Medicine Reviews databases for English-language articles published between 2006 and 2011 that featured medical students and interventions addressing multiple EBM skills. They extracted data on learner and instructor characteristics, educational settings, teaching methods, and EBM skills covered.RESULTS:The 20 included articles described interventions delivered in 12 countries in classroom 75%, clinic 25%, and/or online 20% environments. The majority 60% focused on clinical students, whereas 30% targeted preclinical students and 10% included both. EBM skills addressed included recognizing a knowledge gap 20%, asking a clinical question 90%, searching for information 90%, appraising information 85%, applying information 65%, and evaluating practice change 5%. Physicians were most often identified as instructors 60%; co-teachers included librarians 20%, allied health professionals 10%, and faculty from other disciplines 10%. Many studies 60% included interventions at multiple points during one year, but none were longitudinal across students tenures. Teaching methods varied. Intervention efficacy could not be determined.CONCLUSIONS:Settings, learner levels and instructors, teaching methods, and covered skills differed across interventions. Authors writing about EBM interventions should include detailed descriptions and employ more rigorous research methods to allow others to draw conclusions about efficacy. When designing EBM interventions, educators should consider trends in medical education e.g., online learning, interprofessional education and in health care e.g., patient-centered care, electronic health records.

via Evidence-Based Medicine Training in Undergraduate M… [Acad Med. 2013] – PubMed – NCBI.

ABSTRACT: Guidelines for ethical and professional use of social media in a hand surgery practice

In growing numbers, patients are using social media platforms as resources to obtain health information and report their experiences in the health care setting. More physicians are making use of these platforms as a means to reach prospective and existing patients, to share information with each other, and to educate the public. In this ever-expanding online dialogue, questions have arisen regarding appropriate conduct of the physician during these interactions. The purpose of this article is to review the laws that govern online communication as they pertain to physician presence in this forum and to discuss appropriate ethical and professional behavior in this setting.

via Guidelines for ethical and professional use o… [J Hand Surg Am. 2012] – PubMed – NCBI.

MANUSCRIPT: Ten challenges in improving quality in healthcare: lessons from the Health Foundation’s programme evaluations and relevant literature.

BACKGROUND:Formal evaluations of programmes are an important source of learning about the challenges faced in improving quality in healthcare and how they can be addressed. The authors aimed to integrate lessons from evaluations of the Health Foundations improvement programmes with relevant literature.METHODS:The authors analysed evaluation reports relating to five Health Foundation improvement programmes using a form of best fit synthesis, where a pre-existing framework was used for initial coding and then updated in response to the emerging analysis. A rapid narrative review of relevant literature was also undertaken.RESULTS:The authors identified ten key challenges: convincing people that there is a problem that is relevant to them; convincing them that the solution chosen is the right one; getting data collection and monitoring systems right; excess ambitions and projectness; organisational cultures, capacities and contexts; tribalism and lack of staff engagement; leadership; incentivising participation and hard edges; securing sustainability; and risk of unintended consequences. The authors identified a range of tactics that may be used to respond to these challenges.DISCUSSION:Securing improvement may be hard and slow and faces many challenges. Formal evaluations assist in recognising the nature of these challenges and help in addressing them.

via Ten challenges in improving quality in healthca… [BMJ Qual Saf. 2012] – PubMed – NCBI.

ABSTRACT: Ordinary search engine users carrying out complex search tasks

Web search engines have become the dominant tools for finding information on the Internet. Owing to their popularity, users of all educational backgrounds and professions use them for a wide range of tasks, from simple look-up to rather complex information-seeking needs. This paper presents the results of a study that investigates the behavioural search characteristics of ordinary Web search engines users. The aim of the study was to investigate (1) what makes complex search tasks distinct from simple search tasks and whether it is possible to find simple measures for describing their complexity, and (2) whether successful searchers show different search behaviours than unsuccessful searchers and whether good searchers can be identified via simple measures. The study included 56 ordinary Web users who carried out a set of 12 search tasks using current commercial search engines. Their behaviour was logged with the Search-Logger tool. The results confirm that the behaviour in the case of complex search tasks has significantly different inherent characteristics than in the case of simple search tasks. This can be proven by using simple measures such as task time, number of queries, or number of browser tabs used. We also observed that it is difficult to distinguish successful from unsuccessful search behaviour simply by using these measures. The implications of our findings for search engine vendors are discussed. The results of this study with a sample of ordinary users are insofar unique as they are valid for a wider population while most studies in the field are usually done using convenience samples such as university students.

via Ordinary search engine users carrying out complex search tasks.

MANUSCRIPT: Web 2.0 and Social Media in Education and Research

The use of technology has become ever more pervasive over the past decade, particularly in relation to information management and in facilitating communication, networking and collaboration. Improvements in communication and the accessibility of information have in  part been driven by the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies (also referred to as the read,  write web) that enable individuals not only to consume content but also to participate in the creation, sharing and remixing of information. Social media tools such as blogs, wikis, media  sharing and social networking sites have done away with the need for individuals to know  how to code and supported increased web accessibility and usability and ultimately growing  engagement with technology. These tools are also being adopted in education and  healthcare where they are supporting innovation and engagement with stakeholders. There  are, however, also some risks associated with using these new technologies that are  particularly pertinent in the healthcare setting. As a result access to these tools and  websites is often restricted and for those healthcare professionals in NHS settings and for  those involved in teaching and for students on NHS clinical attachments this can prove both  limiting and frustrating.
This paper  provides an overview of how Web 2.0 technologies are being used to support  teaching, learning and research in higher education highlights some of the risks associated with the use of social media in relation to  NHS staff and to propose that training could raise awareness of these risks as well  the potential benefits details common problems with NHS IT hardware and software faced by staff with a  role in higher education and concludes with a summary overview of common Web 2.0 and social media tools and  their potential benefits, risks and suggested  recommendations for access.

https://community.ja.net/system/files/515/NHF_Web2 0SoMEinEdResearch_May2013_final.pdf

RESOURCE: Take Note | An exploration of note-taking in Harvard University Collections

Notes surround us. Whether in the form of lab notebooks, fieldnotes, sketchbooks, class notes, or surreptitious shorthand notes on plays and sermons, notetaking forms the basis of every scholarly discipline as well as of most literate people’s daily lives. Millennia after a potsherd from second-century Egypt, notes remain the lowest common denominator of information management. Like written responses to reading, manuscript records of speech cut across different cultures, different fields, and even different phases of life: students take notes on their professors’ lectures, which in turn form the product of professors’ notes on books. And from Aristotle’s philosophy to the works of 20th- century thinkers like Saussure and Wittgenstein, many of the foundational texts of Western culture have been transmitted or even generated by notes. Yet the definition of notes remains contentious: should we be speaking of “annotation” or “notetaking”? The former emphasizes something done to a text, the latter a more freestanding kind of writing; the former shades into commentary or metadata or marginalia, the latter into transcription of oral delivery.

via Take Note | An exploration of note-taking in Harvard University Collections.

RESOURCE: Note-Taking Seminars at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study – NYTimes.com

…the conference was more than a celebration of quirky marginalia and academic navel-gazing. The study of notes — whether pasted into commonplace books, inscribed on index cards or scribbled in textbooks — is part of a broader scholarly investigation into the history of reading, a field that has gained ground as the rise of digital technology has made the encounter between book and reader seem more fragile and ghostly than ever.

“The note is the record a historian has of past reading,” said Ann Blair, a professor of history at Harvard and one of the conference organizers. “What is reading, after all? Even if you look introspectively, it’s hard to really know what you’re taking away at any given time. But notes give us hope of getting close to an intellectual process.”

Not that note-taking was presumed to be an entirely wholesome activity. During the first panel, when asked if enthusiastic note-takers weren’t more like “compulsive hoarders,” Peter Burke, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Cambridge in England, recalled one of his own teachers warning that any student caught taking notes would be sent out of the classroom for inattention.

via Note-Taking Seminars at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study – NYTimes.com.

RESOURCE: Online class providers will grant credentials, for a fee

Providers of free online classes are experimenting with academic security measures that will enable students who successfully complete the college courses to obtain credentials, for a small fee, that convey some of the cachet of a premier university.The credentials, or certificates, won’t translate into course credit toward a degree — at least not at big-name schools — because questions persist about how much those schools are willing to grant students who don’t pay tuition, as well as about the potential for cheating online.

via Online class providers will grant credentials, for a fee.

ABSTRACT: Temporal reasoning over clinical text: the state of the art

Objectives To provide an overview of the problem of temporal reasoning over clinical text and to summarize the state of the art in clinical natural language processing for this task.

Target audience This overview targets medical informatics researchers who are unfamiliar with the problems and applications of temporal reasoning over clinical text.

Scope We review the major applications of text-based temporal reasoning, describe the challenges for software systems handling temporal information in clinical text, and give an overview of the state of the art. Finally, we present some perspectives on future research directions that emerged during the recent community-wide challenge on text-based temporal reasoning in the clinical domain.

via Temporal reasoning over clinical text: the state of the art — Sun et al. — Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.