BACKGROUND Much has been written in the educational literature on the value of communities of practise in enhancing student learning. Here, we take the experience of senior undergraduate medical students involved in short-term research as a member of a team as a paradigm for learning in a community of practise. Based on feedback from experienced supervisors, we offer recommendations for initiat...

OBJECTIVE Brain donation and neuropathological examination of brain tissues is the only way to obtain definitive diagnostic information on research subjects enrolled in aging studies. We investigated predictors of brain donation in a population-based study of centenarians in Phase III of the Georgia Centenarian Study (GCS). METHODS Sixty-six individuals (mean age = 100.6 years, 91% female, 20...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate suicide seasonality in the city of São Paulo within an urban area and tropical zone. METHOD Suicides were evaluated using the chi-square test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) by comparing monthly, quarterly and half-yearly variations, differentiating by gender. Analyses of time series were carried out using the autocorrelation function and periodogram, while the signific...

PURPOSE The growing competitiveness between various health centres in the scope of offered medical services is accompanied by growth of patients' expectations concerning the quality of the abovementioned services. That is why knowledge of the patients' needs and expectations concerning medical services may significantly contribute to the improvement in the quality of the services to be rendered...

The dominance of Jamaican sprinters in international meets remains largely unexplained. Proposed explanations include demographics and favorable physiological characteristics. The aim of this study was to analyze the demographic characteristics of world class Jamaican sprinters. Questionnaires administered to 120 members of the Jamaican national team and 125 controls elicited information on pla...

Objectives To assess levels of burnout in medical students, and to explore the influence of extracurricular activities on burnout at a medical school in Saudi Arabia. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted with first to fourth year medical students at King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Socio-demographic, burnout level (the Masla...

BACKGROUND The Second China National Sample Survey on Disability in 2006 showed that the participation rate of disabled Chinese rural individuals in social medical insurance participation was less than 30%. However, there has been limited number of studies on the influencing factors, especially contextual factors, affecting their participation in social medical insurance. Therefore, this study ...

AIMS AND BACKGROUND The increasingly older population confronts oncologists with an imposing challenge: older cancer patients have specific healthcare needs both independent of and associated with the diagnosis of cancer. The aim of the present study is to examine whether elderly versus younger cancer patients have different needs with respect to attendance, treatment and information. METHODS...

The main concern of this study was communication strategies (CSs) which are used to compensate for communication breakdown. The goals of this study were to examine whether proficiency level of Iranian students had any relationship with their choice of CSs. This research was descriptive in nature. The participants were 15 pre-intermediate and 14 intermediate EFL learners between 16 to 21years ol...