AIMS World Health Organization data illustrate a worldwide re-emergence of interest in the scope of lay health workers for extending services to 'hard-to-reach' community groups. In the UK, the health trainer model of service delivery represents one such innovative way of working, first described in the White Paper Choosing Health: Making Healthier Choices Easier and more recently in the Kings ...

Virtual laparoscopic training systems have been shown to differentiate between the skills of experienced and novice laparoscopic surgeons. Measures such as total number of errors and completion time are used to assess skill, but these metrics do not give much insight into the processes behind skilled behavior in simulated laparoscopic tasks. The eye gaze of 2 groups of subjects, one experienced...

* Marc Robinson is a European-based international consultant and trainer. This article was written when he was a senior economist in the Fiscal Affairs Department of the International Monetary Fund. The author gratefully acknowledges the valuable comments of Marco Cangiano, Ian Lienert, Gösta Ljungman, David Fjord Nielsen, Eivind Tandberg and participants in a seminar in the Fiscal Affairs Depa...

Where is the present flurry of activity in medical education leading and what sort of future is envisaged? This paper looks at trends in postgraduate medical education. Four themes and two trends for each theme have been identified. The themes are: the postgraduate medical curriculum, the application of learning technologies, assessment of competence, and professionalism in medical education. T...

Family systems theory posits that the relative effectiveness of early interventions will vary depending on various aspects of the family. This study tested whether maternal responsivity would predict the extent to which Prelinguistic Milieu Teaching (PMT) facilitated generalized intentional communication better than a contrast treatment that was conducted in a small group by a responsive adult ...

In laparoscopic training, trainers take great effort to gesture over video for trainees to develop a mutual understanding of the complex operative field. To facilitate the conveyance of expert knowledge, we designed a telestration system that enables trainers to point or draw free hand sketches over a video for a trainee to see. The perceived usefulness and acceptance of the telestration system...

OBJECTIVE The importance of addressing psychological issues in athletic injury rehabilitation has been recognized by the medical community. When and how to address psychological ramifications of injury, however, have not been given sufficient attention. BACKGROUND VARIOUS FACTORS ARE ASSOCIATED WITH ATHLETIC INJURY: models of adjustment to athletic injury, a 10-point assessment inventory, and...

BACKGROUND Research has shown that narrative feedback, (self) reflections and a plan to undertake and evaluate improvements are key factors for effective feedback on clinical performance. We investigated the quantity of narrative comments comprising feedback (by trainers), self-reflections (by trainees) and action plans (by trainer and trainee) entered on a mini-CEX form that was modified for u...

©FSRH J Fam Plann Reprod Health Care 2008: 34(3) Background Nurses undertaking intrauterine device/intrauterine system (IUD/IUS) training have extra hoops to jump through. Trainer and trainee benefit from being aware of these and both can learn from the process. This article shares the personal experience of one trainer/trainee pair, both of whom enjoyed the experience and who wish to share the...

Various publications discuss the discrepancies of running in triathlons and stand-alone runs. However, those methods, such as analysing step-characteristics or ground-contact time, lack the ability to quantitatively discriminate between subtle running differences. The attractor method can be applied to overcome those shortcomings. The purpose was to detect differences in athletes' running patte...