-In a previous paper the use of GAs as an editing technique for the k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) classification technique has been suggested. Here we are looking at different fitness functions. An experimental study with the IRIS data set and with a medical data set has been carried out. Best results (smallest subsets with highest test classification accuracy) have been obtained by including in th...

AIM Doctors must ensure they are fit to practise medicine. There is a relationship between unprofessional behaviour at medical school and in subsequent medical practice. This study describes one programme's Fitness to Practice (FtP) policy and outcomes since inception in 2005. METHOD FtP notifications were classified into: health or personal; professional attitudes, or external issues. Seriou...

New evidence has appeared to support the fact that the over-involvement of older drivers in traffic accidents disappears when the low mileage bias is taken into account. As a group, older drivers are as safe as or safer than other age groups, and only low mileage older drivers have a high crash rate. Furthermore, the role of the medical condition of older drivers in traffic accidents, as well a...

BACKGROUND Misconduct during medical school predicts subsequent fitness to practise (FtP) events in doctors, but relatively little is known about which factors are associated with such issues during undergraduate education. This study exploits the newly created UK medical education database (UKMED), with the aim of identifying predictors of conduct or health-related issues that could potentiall...

This follow-up study investigated the relationship between changes in physical fitness and exercise habits during the 1st and 4th years in healthy medical college students. We also investigated the relation between exercise habits and the lifestyle factors during the same period of time. The subjects were 229 male and 126 female student volunteers who received physical fitness tests and questio...

The text of this paper is based on a presentation at the First International Congress of Maritime, Tropical, and Hyperbaric Medicine, 4th July 2009, Gdynia, Poland. The assessment of fitness to work at sea is an important aspect of maritime risk management. The risks in the industry, the approaches used for assessment, and the evidence on which they are based have changed over time. The transit...

In Ontario, as in six other Canadian provinces, mandatory reporting of patients considered to be potentially medically unfit to drive has been introduced as one means of addressing this issue. In their case-series analysis of drivers involved in a motor vehicle collision and subsequently admitted to an Ontario trauma unit for treatment, Redelmeier and colleagues demonstrate that, despite legisl...