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Summary Background: The UK's General Medical Council (GMC) emphasises effective communication as fundamental to good medical practice. Conversations with colleagues without English as a first language suggested that their needs in learning clinical communication skills might have differed from those of native English speakers. This study investigated whether training in UK medical schools was adequately catering for these students. Methods: An electronic questionnaire was distributed to seven UK medical schools. Responses were analysed to find areas of concern, the most beneficial aspects of the current curriculum and proposals for improvements. Results: In total, 151 international students responded. Students reported improvements in clinical communication throughout medical school, but concerns remain concerning 'social communication' and integration with peers. A majority felt that there was a need to improve clinical communication training specifically for international students. Conclusion: Medical schools are successful in helping international students to develop clinical communication skills, but could further encourage social integration. This could be achieved by introducing a programme linking international students with non-international students upon medical school entry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Background: As part of a larger project to identify appropriate responses and sanctions for lapses in professionalism by health profession students and trainees - and their teachers - we formed reference groups of medical educators to give preliminary guidance. We hope that these data will help to generate 'a greater consistency' to fitness-to-practice procedures in UK medical schools, and across the health professions, as called for by the UK Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence in 2009. Methods: Having previously identified 42 forms of poor professionalism among students at the 'proto-professional' stage of undergraduate training, of which 37 could also occur in clinical teachers, we asked reference groups of UK medical educators ( n = 27) and from one medical school ( n = 35) to recommend appropriate responses by students if they observed lapses of professionalism in their teachers. Results: There was clear congruence within and between the two reference groups on recommended responses for 90 per cent of the lapses. Discussion: This congruence amounts to a broad range of consensus among 62 UK medical educators about whether students should ignore, challenge the individual, discuss with peers or report the lapse to a more senior person, if their teachers exhibit certain behaviours. We hope that these data will help to generate a national consensus on appropriate responses that can be used to foster a culture of 'local resolution' in which juniors feel empowered to address poor professionalism, as well as guide undergraduate fitness to practice procedures. Dissemination and validation of these findings will now be undertaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing emphasis on ambulatory health care, clinical educators need to ensure that students are sufficiently prepared to maximise learning opportunities during placements in ambulatory settings This study focuses on third-year medical students entering urban or rural clinical placements at an Australian graduate entry medical school. All rural and a subset of urban students received intensive training in taking Papanicolaou (Pap) smears prior to starting the clinical placement. Training involved gynaecological teaching associates, active practice and real-time feedback. Evaluation included workshop feedback, reflection on effectiveness during the placement, and comparison of trained and untrained students' recorded clinical experience of taking Pap smears. Students given pre-placement training praised their learning experience, and on average took more Pap smears during their placement than did their untrained peers. The difference, however, did not reach statistical significance. The pre-placement teaching workshop on a difficult skill was popular and worthy of further study regarding other challenging clinical skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selection for an educational programme requires meticulous planning and the adoption of sound educational principles to decide on how and what should be assessed. This article provides a step-wise guide for developing a selection process for postgraduate specialty training, based on the best practice in the literature. The literature on selecting applicants for educational programmes was reviewed to categorise the selection methods according to their purpose, and their relative strengths and weaknesses. A step-wise guide that encapsulated the best practice for designing a selection process for postgraduate specialty training was then developed. The steps of developing a selection process for postgraduate specialty training are: determining the competencies required for the training programme; selecting the competencies that can be assessed at selection; identifying content for selection; blueprinting; choice of selection tests; development of test material; piloting; and implementation and evaluation of the selection process. There are robust tests to assess applicants' knowledge at the lower two levels of Miller's pyramid. Scenario-based testing holds promise for assessing at 'shows-how' level. Assessing at 'does' level during selection is difficult, but not impossible. There is no one test that can be used to select an applicant for a postgraduate training programme. Rather a battery of tests that assesses all the competencies, sampled according to a blueprint, should be used. The eight-step guide proposed in this article provides an educationally sound and defensible procedure to develop a selection process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Council for Higher Education in Israel published an extensive report in 2007, calling for a significant increase of undergraduate medical education in Israel in ambulatory care settings. The objective of this article is to propose an action plan aimed at shifting undergraduate medical education in Israel towards ambulatory education. Context: The main barriers to increasing ambulatory education in Israel are lack of academic recognition for teaching and excellence, conflict between patient care, income and teaching, lack of an adequate educational infrastructure and faculty in ambulatory care, and insufficient support and involvement of the health organisations. However, there is great potential for developing ambulatory education in Israel based on existing resources: Israel has a well-established primary care network, has chronic disease management programmes, community-based preventive medicine and health promotion activities, and an emerging structure for home, palliative and terminal care in the community. Innovation: The proposed action plan presents a framework for enhancing ambulatory education in undergraduate medical education in Israel, and allows site-specific adjustments according to the preferences, resources and capabilities of each of the four medical schools. Implications: A national shift to ambulatory education in Israel can be implemented through the existing coordination mechanism of the four medical schools. A government funding policy that encourages the collaboration between four medical schools will be beneficial both in terms of resource utilisation and the engagement of other stakeholders. The recognition of community services and educational excellence can be advanced by establishing academies of teaching scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In modern times, peer tutoring methods have been explored in health care education for over 30 years. In this paper, we report our experience of implementing a peer-tutoring approach to Clinical Skills Laboratory (CSL) training in the Graduate Entry in Medicine Programme (GEM) at University College Cork. Methods: Eighteen fourth-year medical students were recruited as peer tutors for CSL sessions on physical examination. In order to standardise the process, we developed a training course for peer tutors that comprised two stages. They then ran the practical sessions with junior students, under the watchful eye of medical educators. At the end of the last CSL session, the students were given 10 minutes to reflect individually on the experience, and were asked to complete a feedback form. Results: Twenty-four of the 42 GEM students and six of the seven Senior Tutors (STs) completed and returned their feedback forms. With the caveats of small sample sizes and low response rates, both groups reported that they had both positive and negative experiences of peer tutoring, but that the positive experiences predominated. Conclusion: The overall experience was positive. In terms of the primary thesis of this study, the STs thought that they were well prepared by the teaching staff to take part in these teaching sessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Undergraduate medical education is shifting away from traditional didactic methods towards a more self-directed learning environment. E-learning has emerged as a vital learning modality that allows students to apply key principles to practical scenarios in a truly personalised approach. Context: At the University of Alberta, paediatrics is taught longitudinally, with lectures distributed throughout the preclinical curriculum and concentrated in the 8-week paediatric clinical clerkship. As a result, students entering clerkship lack core foundational knowledge and clinical skills. Innovation: PedsCases ( ) is a student-driven interactive website designed to achieve the learning outcomes identified by the competency-based paediatric curriculum. This open-access e-learning tool is a comprehensive peer-reviewed learning resource that incorporates various learning modalities. Material is student generated and peer reviewed by staff paediatricians to ensure validity, accuracy and usefulness. After 17 months, PedsCases contains 216 questions, 19 cases, 11 flashcard-type quizzes, 11 podcasts and two clinical videos, and has had 2148 unique visitors from 73 different countries. PedsCases is one of the top five references returned by Internet search engines for the phrase ‘paediatrics for medical students’. Implications: PedsCases is a collaborative resource created for and by medical students that provides an opportunity for active self-directed learning while disseminating knowledge in an evidence-based, interactive and clinically relevant fashion. PedsCases encourages students to take an active role in their education and drive medical education initiatives in response to the evolving curriculum. As the focus of medical education shifts towards independent learning, student-led educational tools such as PedsCases have emerged as essential resources for students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes an educational strategy to teach direct ophthalmoscopy (DO) to medical students in primary care. The strategy involved a seminar which taught familiarization with DO where students received instruction and practiced on each other. An education event was followed at a local general practice where students performed DO on patients, then discussed the eye problem relevant to each patient. The factors supporting the suitability of primary care to teach DO are also discussed.

The article discusses the non-income-related factors that affect faculty staff recruitment and retention at Harvard Medical School/Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HMS/HSDM). Various factors include working relationships with colleagues, the gap between academic incomes and private practice incomes, and student debt. Also mentioned are good quality mentorship, participation beyond the home institutions, and the importance of leadership.

The article discusses the significance of multi-source feedback (MSF) in assessing professional behaviors in undergraduates in Great Britain. It highlights the advantages of MSF, including the improvement of medical students' knowledge on expected communication skills standards, the identification of mutable behaviors and students' improvement. Moreover, it enumerates the commonly used statements in patient feedback questionnaire.

The article presents a study which examines the validity, feasibility, and educational impact of Acute Care Assessment Tool (ACAT) in evaluating the performance of a trainee in acute medicine. ACAT aims to enhance the interaction of trainees with senior doctors and implement the provision of feedback on a trainee's performance in the acute care setting. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of ACAT as a formative assessment of acute medicine practice.

Thus, the SP programme incorporated SPs' feedback into every teaching activity they take part in.In an exam context, such as Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs), SPs know that the format usually does not allow feedback. Many SPs indicated that their feedback to learners made their participation in teaching "meaningful" and "rewarding". Dear Editor,I read with great interest the article by Sullivan et al.1 on simulated patients' (SP) perspectives regarding their contribution to student learning. [Extracted from the article]

The article describes a novel combination of computer technology and scenario-based assessment for medical students in London, England, called the Imperial College Feedback and Assessment System (ICFAS). It is an innovative approach to providing feedback to trainees on their performance in clinical procedural skills. It integrates affordable and widely available technologies to provide a powerful educational tool that offers high levels of feedback to trainees via the web.

The article focuses on the range of activities created by the Royal Free and University College Medical School (RFUCMS) in Great Britain. The aim of these activities is to encourage students to be involve in cooperative learning and start to build up the foundation skills of medical teachers. Moreover, it discusses the most successful iniatives of the medical school, like the student-selected components (SSCs) and the peer-assisted learning programme.

The article focuses on the revitalizatiom of medical education in Chile. It discusses the challenges faced by the Medical School of the Pontifica Universidad Católica de Chile (UC) in leading the innovation of knowledge, creativity and delivering the best possible training to Chilean medical students. Moreover, it adds that the aim of the school is to give quality education and develop not only the best prepared doctors but also doctors who are ready to serve the people and country.

The article presents best practice guidelines for medical educators and physicians in supporting refugee foreign physicians, nurses, and medical personnel who wish to undertake clinical practice in Great Britain. Grants-in-aid have been released by the Department of Health to fund projects that assist refugee health personnel (RHP).

The article reports on the significance of patients' role in medical education. According to the author, ordinary people specifically the patients themselves play a significant role in the development of medical education. The author cites various issues of concern in by which effective patient involvement in medical practice can be exhausted.

The article cites the author's personal reflections about the assessment tool called Calgary-Cambridge guides. He states that if he had to teach only one skill related to medical interviewing, it would be flexibility. The uses of the guides are discussed. The author emphasizes the need for teachers to question the guides and explore when situations require different approaches.

The article provides information on the study which focuses on the new program that employ adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) in teaching and objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs). The program aims to help future medical practitioners to become skilled, sensitive, and confident in communicating and managing the physical health needs of people with ID. The results suggest that student confidence and performance in clinical examinations have demonstrated competence.

The article discusses some tips for career enhancement and enjoyment of health professionals. An individual who is considering a formal role in teaching and learning is advised to take postgraduate course programs depending on his specific interests. It is also recommended for a person to determine his particular learning objectives concerning the content and skills to be acquired.

The article describes the development of the Best Evidence Medical Education Collaboration (BEME), an organization committed to evidence-informed policy and practice in health care sciences education. The BEME aims for a culture of best available evidence in the practice of health care sciences education among individual teachers, institutions and national bodies. Support and training for colleagues undertaking systematic reviews of health care sciences education are provided by the BEME.

The term "pivot" has been used a great deal in describing the educational changes that have been enacted rapidly in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic One significant aspect of the educational game that we have likely been thinking about is what we may have lost as we move our educational practice to virtual learning. We may have taken for granted that students were engaging with the curriculum, were learning in response to our assessments, were creating and benefiting from peer networks, and were becoming enculturated and connected to their educational programme, the profession and their patients. The greatest risk associated with our post-COVID-19 educational changes may be that we work very hard to replicate our prior curriculum in the virtual setting without asking whether that prior curriculum served the needs of our students, our patients and society. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on the use of standardized patients in medical education. Standardized patients are individuals trained by medical educators to act as patients and present clinical signs and symptoms in a standardized manner. They are widely used internationally in place of actual patients and are considered as a useful teaching and learning resource for medical students. They are commonly employed in examination settings wherein students are able to practice new strategies.

The article discusses the important factors that can improve the practical clinical skills teaching in Great Britain. Maastricht University has set up its skills laboratory which includes training skills on the physical aspects, therapeutic, laboratory and communication. The teaching of clinical skills in normal environment with support from tutors will guarantee that students are able to acquire the expertise that will transform them into full-pledged members of the health care team.

The article focuses on the importance of induction or orientation in welcoming students and providing them with the information they need to give them confidence to embark on their educational experience. Students should be made aware of the hospital's motto. And, they need to know how they will be evaluated.

The article discusses the scope of Pathology and its importance to medical students. The term pathology encompasses a wide variety of clinical disciplines, from forensic pathology to hematological oncology. Most pathology teachers would agree that students need to assimilate pathology information in two main areas: knowledge and context.

The article reports on the introduction of peer assisted learning activities (PAL) to encourage students to develop their skills in teaching, learning, and assessing and to engage in co-operative learning in Great Britain. PAL is common to pre-school, primary, secondary, tertiary and work-based education. The medical school introduced the first PAL initiative in the year 2000 and, with the support of teaching staff and students.

The article reports on the establishment of the General Medical Council (GMC) to evaluates the performance of doctors in Great Britain. The purpose of the GMC is to protect, promote and maintain the health and safety of the community by ensuring proper standards in the practice of medicine. The performance assessment of doctors comprises two parts: peer review and test of competence.

The article reports on the establishment of the Communication Skills Unit at the Royal Free and University College Medical School as part of the Academic Center for Medical Education in Great Britain. The purpose of the unit is to promote the practice of effective communication between doctors and their patients, their peer group and other professionals within the health care setting.

The article discusses educational assessment procedures based on the stories of Harry Potter. In the stories, the author created an educational institution charged with the responsibility of preparing its students for the vocation of witchcraft and wizardry. One of the most important activities that take place in the institution is the assessment of the core knowledge, skills and attitudes that its students are expected to master. The first and most important step in the development of a robust assessment is defining what is to be tested. It is important in order to determine whether the procedure provides an adequate and representative biopsy of the core instructional objectives at a particular developmental level.

The article describes the mini Clinical Evaluation Exercise or mini-CEX, a method for simultaneously assessing the clinical skills of trainees and offering feedback on their performance, recounts on how it was developed and illustrates its use in the Modernizing Medical Careers Foundation Program Assessment in the U. S. The validity and reliability of mini-CEX is derived by observing the trainees while engaged with a series of real patients in different practice setting and judgments about the quality of the encounter made by skilled educator-clinicians. Its educational effects are based on a significant increase in the number of occasions on which trainees are directly observed with patients and offered feedback on their performance.

The article focuses on the impact of the changes in healthcare education on the development of clinical skills (CS) learning. CS learning has, therefore had to find a new venue and adopt new approaches to teaching and learning. New facilities have developed where learners can experience and practice skills they require to be healthcare practitioners. A new CS learning program can draw on best practice educational research and sound established educational theory. The author presented the benefits of clinical skills learning facilities.

The article focuses on assessing medical competence. One way of looking at assessment is to see it as a measurement of medical competence. One could then regard examinations as diagnostic tools. If one lab test is really off the scale it is assumed that there is something wrong with the patient. The diagnosis of medical incompetence can be made only on the basis of various methods. Failures in comprehension may hamper or confuse, even though many of the underlying concepts in education and medicine are the same.

The article outlines a curriculum regarding dermatology recommended by the British Association of Dermatologists (BAD) for medical students.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the adverse events in surgery, the significance of simulation-based learning for the medical practitioners and the factors that affect the preparedness of medical students.

In this article, the author discusses interprofessional education (IPE). He mentions that learning could be more effective when there is greater interaction among professional groups. He suggests assessing outcomes of IPE learning and reports that it might be a good resource to put large number of students in lectures.

Peer-assisted learning (PAL) involves medical students teaching other medical students. Although the concept is not new, formal PAL is a relatively new development in medical education. PAL Manchester is a peer-assisted learning scheme that has run for over 6 years at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust. It is a student-led scheme that teaches clinical skills to medical students in years 3-5 of the Manchester curriculum. The scheme comprises small group sessions of 12 students and two peer tutors. Here, we present the experiences of PAL Manchester from three perspectives: student (Francesca Liuzzi), peer tutor (Elspeth Hill) and student co-ordinator (James Giles). These accounts illustrate the roles within PAL Manchester and the personal benefits that may be derived from such a scheme. Different roles for medical students can be developed within a PAL scheme, presenting different challenges and benefits to participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wong and See have described how studying medical curricula in English at the University of Hong Kong can lead to challenging patient interactions in the native language during clinical rotations.1 Doctor-patient rapport is influenced by optimal communication skills, where doctors connect with patients, identify relevant signs and symptoms, build medical histories, and develop treatment approaches.2 As doctors-in-training in the Dominican Republic, we observe communication challenges for our peers who are non-native Spanish speakers from the United States, Canada and Haiti, and recommend three strategies to strengthen how international medical students may acquire Spanish language skills during academic training in Spanish. First, complementing the Spanish language admission test, medical schools should incorporate activities where students are in contact with local ("Dominican") slang and colloquial terms. Oman Med J. 2011; 26 (4): 219 - 22. https://doi.org/10.5001/omj.2011.55 4 Chapman HJ, Bottentuit-Rocha J. Medical students' perceptions about the added educational value of student-run HIV/AIDS educational campaigns in the Dominican Republic. [Extracted from the article]

The article reports on the role for a licensing examination in Great Britain. Topics discussed include the regulatory body, General Medical Council (GMC) which sets standards for medical schools in Great Britain; the plan of GMC to introduce a national medical licensing assessment; and the concept of a common licensing examination.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses the contents within the issue including articles on topics such as documentation by medical students, formal teaching of clinic letter writing, and importance of timely feedback to students.

The article presents the author's experience of an interview given by him for a medical school. Topics discussed include the racial prejudice suffered by the author during the interview, the unconscious bias in the admission process of medical schools in the U.S., and the measures taken by the schools to remove the bias. Also mentioned is the Implicit Attitudes Test taken by the Ohio State University College of Medicine (OSUCOM).

The article discusses the concern of prescribing competencies among medical graduate students in Great Britain. Topics discussed include safe prescription guidelines in the General Medical Council (GMC) 2009 guidelines: Tomorrow's Doctors, a lack of clinical pharmacology knowledge among junior doctors, and a study on prescription errors sponsored by GMC. Also emphasize on the Prescribing Skills Assessment (PSA) by the Medical Schools Council and the British Pharmacological Society.

The article discusses the view of the author regarding the problem-based learning (PBL) in Great Britain. According to the author PBL provides a platform to medical students to learn medicine and skills to ensure that they remain up-to-date with the clinical knowledge. It notes that students are willing to engage with a PBL method to physiology and pathology. It also mentions that the limitations of PBL must be recognized by the people who deliver it.

The article focuses on the paper written by Steven Durning and colleagues regarding the different views of observers on clinical encounters. It mentions that the said differences in views can be explained by the theories of situated cognition and ecological psychology. It states that the report compares the clinical views of student, patient, and doctor. It adds that the different perspectives of student in a clinical encounter reveal its capability.

The author reflects on the skill of a clinical teacher to create a supportive environment within which the students are able to do their best. He argues on several assessment techniques such as direct observation and the mini clinical examination which seem better suited to measure competence rather than performance under pressure. The author suggests the importance of funding bodies in ranking clinical teaching alongside clinical service as equally vital.

The article reviews the article "Medical Students' First Clinical Experiences of Death," by E. Kelly and J. Nisker.

The article offers information on several studies related to trauma care and education. One study discusses the development of a three-day simulation module including trauma and critical care scenarios to teach first-year surgical trainees. The other study evaluates an eLearning tool designed to improve handover between emergency department and pre-hospital care providers in the Netherlands. Another study describes the inconsistency in trauma education for undergraduate students in Israel.

The article discusses the role of empathy in medical education. Topics discussed include a pilot course using standardized patients implemented at an academic centre in Germany for the demonstration of empathy by the doctor, involvement in student service organizations for promoting leadership, empathy and commitment to underserved populations, and an objective structured clinical examination for psychiatry student at the University College Dublin in Ireland.

Background: Clinical bedside teaching is arguably the most favoured form of teaching by medical students, but has been on the decline in recent years. Junior doctors are often underused as teachers and, with adequate training, may help to solve this problem. Bedside Teachers is a junior doctor-led teaching programme that is delivered throughout South-East Scotland, and is now in its third year. This study aimed to investigate the perceptions of final-year medical students participating in the Bedside Teachers programme, and how they compared this with teaching from senior staff. Methods: Anonymised questionnaires were issued to all participants. Students were asked to rate statements relating to: (i) the quality of bedside teaching tutorials; and (ii) the teaching delivered by junior doctors compared with that delivered by senior staff. Results: All students indicated that the tutorials improved their confidence in clinical examination. Eighty-seven per cent indicated that it provided a useful clinical experience that they would otherwise not have received. All respondents indicated that junior doctors were more approachable than senior staff. The majority of students indicated that they thought junior doctors covered more relevant material to being a good junior doctor, and that junior doctor-led teaching was at least as good or better than teaching by senior staff on a number of other criteria. Conclusions: With adequate training, junior doctors can be a useful resource for increasing the bedside teaching opportunities available to students, with potential advantages over using senior staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Pre-employment competency screening (PECS) has been introduced in some regions in the UK for foundation applicants. There is no consensus on how the process should be run, and this has led to a variety of methods used between and within deaneries. This study aims to look at the acceptability and, in part, the educational impact of PECS in the North Western Foundation School. Methods: An electronic survey was created and sent to all of the foundation applicants assigned to posts in the North Western Deanery. The survey covered attitudes to the PECS process and collected demographic details about their medical school of origin. Free-text comments were analysed for recurring themes by two of the investigators, and variances were discussed until common themes were agreed upon. Results: The questionnaire was sent to 555 candidates with 265 replies. Foundation doctors saw the identification of educational needs, assessment of competency, making provision for support and patient safety as the main purposes of PECS. A majority of respondents felt that PECS was a fair assessment of competencies (90%), and that the process was valuable (80.4%). Discussion: The results suggest that foundation doctors find the PECS process acceptable, and see it as an opportunity to identify educational needs and to be supported in weak areas. There are concerns about the validity of these assessments, and we have suggested recommendations for standardising PECS whilst acknowledging the need for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]