Not Another Boring Resident Didactic Conference

Not another boring lecture: engaging learners with active learning techniques.

BACKGROUND Core content in Emergency Medicine Residency Programs is traditionally covered in didactic sessions, despite evidence suggesting that learners do not retain a significant portion of what is taught during lectures. DISCUSSION We describe techniques that medical educators can use when leading teaching sessions to foster engagement and encourage self-directed learning, based on curren...

Not boring at all

The element boron is not renowned among biologists, short of a few specialists who know that it is an essential nutrient for plants and an element in boromycin—an antibiotic compound produced by Streptomyces. Yet, on the whole, molecular biologists and, in particular, those in drug development seem to have little use for carbon’s left-hand neighbour in the periodic table. This is about to chang...

Does a Weekly Didactic Conference Improve Resident Performance on the Pediatric Domain of the Orthopaedic In-Training Examination?

BACKGROUND Performance on the Orthopaedic In-training Examination (OITE) has been correlated with performance on the written portion of the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery examination. Herein we sought to discover whether adding a regular pediatric didactic lecture improved residents' performance on the OITE's pediatric domain. METHODS In 2012, a didactic lecture series was started in t...

Repetitive perhaps, but certainly not boring

Why another conference on personalized medicine?

COST – European Cooperation in Science and Technology – opened up the field of personalized medicine in 1986 when, as part of the Biomedicine and Molecular Biosciences Domain, it sanctioned a research network (aka COST Action) to recruit trial subjects based on differences in metabolic capacity (COST Action B1, 1986). Since then, progress in technology, along with a growing understanding of ind...