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A skin abscess model for teaching incision and drainage procedures

Background:
Teachers strive to motivate their students to be self-directed learners. One of the methods used is to provide online formative assessment material. The concept of formative assessment and use of these processes is heavily promoted, despite limited evidence as to their efficacy.
Methods:
Fourth year medical students, in their first year of clinical work were divided into four groups. Each group was provided with some form of supplementary learning material. For two groups, this was provided as online formative assessment. The amount of time students spent on the supplementary material was measured, their opinion on learning methods was surveyed, and their performance in summative exams at the end of their surgical attachments was measured.
Results:
The performance of students was independent of any educational intervention imposed by this study. Despite its ready availability and promotion, student use of the online formative tools was poor.
Conclusion:
Formative learning is an ideal not necessarily embraced by students. If formative assessment is to work students need to be encouraged to participate, probably by implementing some form of summative assessment.

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Background:
This needs assessment, initiated by the Academy for Healthcare Education Inc. in cooperation with AXDEV Group Inc., explored the knowledge, attitudes, behavior, and skills of community-based and academic-affiliated U.S. cardiologists in the area of CV risk assessment, treatment, and management from July 2006 to December 2006.
Methods:
The needs assessment used a multistage, mixed-method approach to collect, analyze, and verify data from two independent sources. The exploratory phase collected data from a representative sampling of U.S. cardiologists by means of qualitative panel meetings, one-on-one interviews, and quantitative questionnaires. In the validation phase, 150 cardiologists from across the United States completed a quantitative online questionnaire. Data were analyzed with standardized statistical methods.
Results:
The needs assessment found that cardiologists have areas of weakness pertaining to their interpersonal skills, which may influence patient-physician communication and patient adherence. Cardiologists appeared to have little familiarity with or lend little credence to the concept of relative CV risk. In daily clinical practice, they faced challenges with regard to optimal patient outcome in areas of patient referral from primary-care providers, CV risk assessment and treatment, and patient monitoring. Community-based and academic-affiliated cardiologists appeared to be only moderately interested in educational interventions that pertain to CV risk-reduction strategies.
Conclusions:
Educational interventions that target cardiologistsa interpersonal skills to enhance their efficacy may benefit community-based and academic-affiliated specialists. Other desirable educational initiatives should address gaps in the patient referral process, improve patient knowledge and understanding of their disease, and provide supportive educational tools and materials to enhance patient-physician communication.

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Background:
UK medical students and doctors from ethnic minorities underperform in undergraduate and postgraduate examinations. Although it is assumed that white (W) and non-white (NW) students enter medical school with similar qualifications, neither the qualifications of NW students, nor their educational background have been looked at in detail. This study uses two large-scale databases to examine the educational attainment of W and NW students.
Methods:
Attainment at GCSE and A level, and selection for medical school in relation to ethnicity, were analysed in two separate databases. The 10th cohort of the Youth Cohort Study provided data on 13,698 students taking GCSEs in 1999 in England and Wales, and their subsequent progression to A level. UCAS provided data for 1,484,650 applicants applying for admission to UK universities and colleges in 2003, 2004 and 2005, of whom 52,557 applied to medical school, and 23,443 were accepted.
Results:
NW students achieve lower grades at GCSE overall, although achievement at the highest grades was similar to that of W students. NW students have higher educational aspirations, being more likely to go on to take A levels, especially in science and particularly chemistry, despite relatively lower achievement at GCSE. As a result, NW students perform less well at A level than W students, and hence NW students applying to university also have lower A-level grades than W students, both generally, and for medical school applicants. NW medical school entrants have lower A level grades than W entrants, with an effect size of about -0.10.
Conclusion:
The effect size for the difference between white and non-white medical school entrants is about B0.10, which would mean that for a typical medical school examination there might be about 5 NW failures for each 4 W failures. However, this effect can only explain a portion of the overall effect size found in undergraduate and postgraduate examinations of about -0.32.

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