Members of the public expect practicing physicians to be competent. They expect poorly performing physicians to be identified and either helped or removed from practice. "Maintenance of professional standards" by continuing education does not identify the poorly performing physician; assessment of clinical performance is necessary for that. Assessment may be responsive-ie, following a complaint...

Medical education in India was introduced by the British several decades ago. Since that time, it has been on the path of evolution, albeit rather slowly. Several changes have been made at regular intervals to the curricula of undergraduate medical teaching, including shortening the duration of basic sciences training, introducing vertical and horizontal integration, and early clinical exposure...

Methods Patients diagnosed as JIA according to ILAR criteria in Pediatric Rheumatology Department of Dokuz Eylül University Hospital were consecutively enrolled in this cross-sectional study. Demographic, clinical and functional characteristics of patients were evaluated. Erythrocyte sedimentation rate, patients’ and physicians’ global VAS, number of involved joints were recorded as nonfunction...

OBJECTIVE Global achievements in health may be limited by critical shortages of health-care workers. To help guide workforce policy, we estimate the future demand for, need for and supply of physicians, by WHO region, to determine where likely shortages will occur by 2015, the target date of the Millennium Development Goals. METHODS Using World Bank and WHO data on physicians per capita from ...

PURPOSE To assess the extent of agreement in the evaluation of non-mydriatic retinographies of diabetic patients among ophthalmologists and a group of primary care physicians with previous training. METHODS The study was divided in two phases. In the first phase, the four participants were instructed in the interpretation of retinographies. The second phase involved the evaluation of 1000 ima...

OBJECTIVE Patients with psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis (PsA) commonly have nail involvement. There is no validated psoriatic nail assessment tool. Recently, investigators developed the Nail Psoriasis Severity Index (NAPSI). Beginning with NAPSI, our goal was to validate a psoriatic nail assessment tool for use in clinical trials, and investigate correlations between nail and other PsA featur...

As global health education becomes increasingly important, more physicians are participating in international health electives (IHEs). Haiti is a favorable site for an IHE because of its substantial health care needs and rich culture. Although both osteopathic and allopathic physicians can provide effective health care to Haitians, osteopathic physicians may be particularly well suited to serve...

As the recent Ebola epidemic demonstrated, the world is not only smaller than ever, but it is also more intricately connected. Exotic diseases once confined to the third or developing world are now everyone's concern. Global has truly become local. Having some knowledge of and com-petencies in global health is not only relevant , but also essential, for every family physician. Many family physi...