Presented Abstracts from the Thirty Fourth Annual Education Conference of the National Society of Genetic Counselors (Pittsburgh, PA, October 2015)

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147137/1/jgc41044.pd

Representing and Redefining Specialised Knowledge: Medical Discourse

This volume brings together five selected papers on medical discourse which show how specialised medical corpora provide a framework that helps those engaging with medical discourse to determine how the everyday and the specialised combine to shape the discourse of medical professionals and non-medical communities in relation to both long and short-term factors. The papers contribute, in an exemplary way, to illustrating the shifting boundaries in today’s society between the two major poles making up the medical discourse cline: healthcare discourse at the one end, which records the demand for personalised therapies and individual medical services; and clinical discourse the other, which documents research into society’s collective medical needs

Understanding Teachers’ Information Needs, Perceived Competencies, and Information Seeking Behaviours for Special Education Information

The focus of this research is to better understand teachers’ information needs, perceived competencies, preferences for information sources, and information seeking behaviours related to special education by level of teaching experience. A mixed methods approach to research was employed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Eighty-five elementary and intermediate school teachers (J.K. through Grade 8) from Catholic and public school boards in southern Ontario, Canada, completed an online survey questionnaire. Semi-structured, follow-up interviews were then conducted with 11 teachers to further explore the issues. The participants were classified into three experience level groups (i.e., novice, intermediate, and expert teachers) based on 9 indicators of teaching and special education experience and expertise. The participants’ special education information needs were coded to the Council for Exceptional Children’s (CEC) 10 Professional Standards for Special Education (2009) to better understand how teachers with different levels of experience perceive their special education needs and to examine how their needs relate to the CEC’s Professional Standards. The semi-structured interview data was used to provide further illumination on the results of the survey data. Overall, teachers’ most frequently identified needs involved instructional strategies (including differentiated instruction) and how to create inclusive classrooms. More experienced teachers were better able to identify and articulate their special education needs. Distinct patterns of source preferences were found based on teachers\u27 experience levels. Novice teachers most preferred face-to-face consultations with knowledgeable experts and least preferred sources of information that were passive, individual activities such as searching online; reading professional books, magazines, and research resources; or watching videos. They reported being less successful at finding the specific information they needed from these sources. Expert teachers favoured research and professional literature and online sources. Teachers also indicated a preference for one source of online special education information and reported only using a few websites as their main point of access for special education information: school board websites, the Ontario Ministry of Education website, and a variety of disability association websites. The ultimate goal of this research is to provide information on how to better support and meet teachers’ information needs related to special education

Factors Affecting the Quality of Practitioner-Patient Communication (and Care): Implications for Medical Education

This study investigated the factors that affect the quality of communication during medical practitioner-patient encounters. To achieve this purpose, the study sought the perceptions of university student-participants using a quantitative-qualitative survey methodology. A significant number of the student- participants were enrolled in healthcare -related programs. Factor Analysis was conducted on the survey items followed by multiple regression analyses and ANOVA. The results of the study suggest that gender and ethnic concordance, doctor quality and medical dynamics are important factors regarding perceptions of case management satisfaction. Additionally, female practitioners were rated higher for case management satisfaction and quality of care. Based on these findings, the study recommends critical and progressive reforms of current medical education policies and curricula which have the potential to improve the quality of communication during medical encounters as well as overall patient care outcomes

Market Analysis: Wavetrend Technologies, Inc.

Our project team performed a market analysis for Wavetrend Technologies, Inc. Wavetrend is a world leader in the deployment of comprehensive track-and-trace solutions providing real-time visibility of assets, people and modes of transportation. This project recommended implementation of RFID technology in the aviation and healthcare industries because of profit potential and the technology\u27s advantages. These recommendations were supported by a great deal of market research gathered from a variety of primary and secondary sources. Our key primary source was a survey distributed to a number of Wavetrend\u27s customers while our secondary sources consisted of various RFID technology periodicals, several academic publications in the WPI database, Yahoo! Finance, and ABI Research

Resident-as-Teacher workshop impact on intensive care medicine residents’ perception of their teaching skills

This dissertation considers the impact of a teaching workshop concerning twenty-five medical residents’ perceptions of teaching skills, with the objective of analysing how these perceptions influence their professional development, patients’ care, communication skills and patients’ safety management, and inquiring whether during their medical training they have had a previous experience of teaching either with students or other residents. A purposive sampling method was used to select twenty-five residents who were interviewed before and after a sixteen-hour Resident as-Teacher workshop given at Luis Vernaza Hospital in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The workshop was divided in two eight-hour sessions during a weekend. Semi-structured interviews were held in the Department of Education of Hospital Luis Vernaza, five open questions were asked to interviewees, all related to Residents as Teachers’ activities and how their perception on their teaching skills would influence them and their patients in the future. The findings after analysing pre and post-workshop interviews suggested that students benefited from their participation in a Resident-as-Teacher workshop, since, at the end of the study they could more accurately understand and explain the importance of teaching as a learning tool for them and their peers, as well as feel more confident about their ability to transmit knowledge and be able to explain the uses of teaching skills for the improvement of patients’ care, and their professional development. An increase in Residents’ motivation to practice peer-teaching was observed, and also the findings evidenced enhanced student understanding, more advanced autonomy and a proactive behaviour in patients’ safety and communications skills. The research leads to suggestions with regards to implications for practice of teachers and policy makers for the inclusion of teaching skills training in medical school curricula as well as directions for future research