Past clinical data are not currently used to calculate pretest probabilities, as they have not been put into a database in clinical settings. This observational study was designed to determine the initial reasons for utilizing home visits or visits to an outpatient urban clinic in Japan.All family medical clinic outpatients and patients visited by the clinic (total = 11,688) over 1460 days were...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate three commercial typhoid rapid antibody tests for Salmonella Typhi antibodies in patients suspected of having typhoid fever in Mpumalanga, South Africa, and Moshi, United Republic of Tanzania. METHODS The diagnostic accuracy of Cromotest(®) (semiquantitative slide agglutination and single tube Widal test), TUBEX(®) and Typhidot(®) was assessed against that of blood cultu...

PURPOSE To provide a qualitative evaluation of the predictive value of the laboratory diagnosis of Lyme disease and to use the resultant data to formulate guidelines for clinical diagnosis. DATA SOURCES A MEDLINE search of English-language articles or articles with English-language abstracts published from 1982 to 1996. DATA EXTRACTION Sensitivity, specificity, and likelihood ratios were ca...

BACKGROUND The effect of visual arts interventions on development of empathy has not been quantitatively investigated. A study was conducted on the effect of a visual arts-based program on the scores of the Jefferson Scale for Physician Empathy (JSPE). METHODS A total of 110 clerks (n = 92) and first-year postgraduate residents (PGY1s) (n = 18) participating in the program were recruited into...

Introduction: Very little prospective, randomized, experimental research exists on the use of simulation as a teaching method, and no studies have compared the effects of 2 strategies of using the Human Patient Simulator (HPS) and a CD-ROM on the management of patients exposed to chemical agents. Methods: A prospective, pretest-posttest experimental, mixed design (within and between) was used t...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The introduction of a prescribed curriculum and a clinical rotation in the PGY-1 year of family medicine training can enhance learning in musculoskeletal and sports medicine. Combining learning experiences in sports medicine and musculoskeletal medicine in the early stages of training establishes a base to master the required competencies by the completion of the train...

Background Palliative medicine is an upcoming new specialty aimed at relieving suffering, improving quality of life and comfort care. There are many challenges and barriers in providing palliative care to our patients. The major challenge is lack of knowledge, attitude and skills among health-care providers. Objectives Evaluate the effectiveness of the certificate course in essentials of pall...

PURPOSE Best practice strategies for helping students learn the reasoning skills of problem solving and critical thinking (CT) remain a source of conjecture, particularly with regard to CT. The dental education literature is fundamentally devoid of research on the cognitive components of clinical decision-making. AIM This study was aimed to develop and evaluate the impact of blended learning ...

BACKGROUND Simulation-based medical education has been growing rapidly and becomes one of the most popular teaching methods for improving patient safety and patient care. The Simulation Subcommittee of the Hong Kong College of Emergency Medicine organized an educational program emphasizing the team training, clinical decision-making and communication skills. This study aimed to evaluate the att...

Many chemistry educators have adopted the process-oriented guided instructional learning (POGIL) pedagogy. However, it is not clear which aspects of POGIL are the most important in terms of actual learning. We compared 354 first-year undergraduate psychology students' learning in physiological psychology using four teaching methods: control, POGIL, POGIL without reporting [no report out (NRO)],...