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The majority of medical schools have curricula that address the health effects of smoking. However, there are many gaps in smoking education, especially in relationship to vertical integration. The authors aimed to determine whether medical students would better address adolescent smoking within a vertically integrated curriculum in comparison with the previous traditional curriculum. They studied two groups of fifth-year students; one group received a specific smoking intervention. Each group consisted of the entire cohort of students within the Child and Adolescent Health rotation of a newly designed medical curriculum. Two groups of students from the previous traditional undergraduate curriculum were available for direct comparison, one of which had received the same teaching on adolescent smoking. An objective structured clinical examination station was used to measure adolescent smoking enquiry. Intervention students in the new curriculum were more likely to enquire about smoking in the objective structured clinical examination than students who did not receive the intervention ( p    [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The viva examination is a common method of assessment in medical education. It is, in essence a performance given by candidates to examiners, and as such, candidates would be well advised to optimize their performance. Knowledge and skills are essential to passing the viva, but they alone are not sufficient. The process of the performance is also important, but it is not often made explicit in feedback during viva practice. Moreover, there are many aspects to the performance process that can be worked on to improve candidates' chances of passing. Here we present 12 tips focused on performance processes, for use by supervisors and their trainees.