BACKGROUND Medical schools must address the fact that students embarking on careers in medicine are idealistic but have a vague understanding of the values and characteristics that define medical professionalism. Traditionally, we have relied primarily on unsystematic role modeling and lectures or seminars on related topics to teach professionalism. METHODS A committee of students and a facul...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to assist in the development of a health technology assessment (HTA) program for the Ministry of Health (MOH) of the Republic of Kazakhstan METHODS Mentoring of an initial HTA program in Kazakhstan was provided by the Canadian Society for International Health (CSIH) by means of a partnership with the Kazakhstan MOH. HTA materials, courses, and one-on-one s...

BACKGROUND Achieving sustainable universal health coverage depends partly on fair priority-setting processes that ensure countries spend scarce resources wisely. While general health economics capacity-strengthening initiatives exist in Africa, less attention has been paid to developing the capacity of individuals, institutions and networks to apply economic evaluation in support of health tech...

BACKGROUND Patient involvement is widely acknowledged to be a valuable component in health technology assessment (HTA) and healthcare decision making. However, quantitative approaches to ascertain patients' preferences for treatment endpoints are not yet established. The objective of this study is to introduce the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) as a preference elicitation method in HTA. Based...

alternative assessment approaches and, among them, self-assessment and peer-assessment are becoming increasingly important in educational contexts. designed to compare self-assessment, peer-assessment, and teacher-assessment, this study included 90 efl students from 3 intact classes divided into 3 groups: self-assessment, peer-assessment, and teacher-assessment. after taking the toefl proficien...

BACKGROUND Dementia syndromes are under-diagnosed and under-treated in primary care. Earlier recognition of and response to dementia syndrome is likely to enhance the quality of life of people with dementia, but general practitioners consistently report limited skills and confidence in diagnosis and management of this condition. Changing clinical practice is difficult, and the challenge for tho...

BACKGROUND A foundational assessment of learning needs is missing from previous reports of telepsychiatry curricula. We used an in-depth needs assessment to identify specific skills required for the practice of effective telepsychiatry, and provide an evidence base to guide the development of telepsychiatry curricula in postgraduate psychiatry training. Many of these skills set telepsychiatry a...

BACKGROUND Apart from objective exam results, the overall feeling of preparedness is important for a successful transition process from being a student to becoming a qualified doctor. This study examines the association between self-assessed deficits in medical skills and knowledge and the feeling of preparedness of junior doctors in order to determine which aspects of medical education need to...

Several studies and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education recommend integration of medical home (MH) concepts into pediatric resident training. There is a paucity of research depicting the current landscape of pediatric resident MH education. We hypothesized formal MH curricula in pediatric residency education are limited and pediatric residency programs desire incorporating ...