Access to Care and Children's Primary Care Experiences: Results from a Prospective Cohort Study

OBJECTIVE: To examine whether and how different kinds of access to care (financial, potential, and realized) predict parent-report child primary care experiences in an urban community sample. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING: A prospective cohort study was performed. Baseline survey data were collected (67 percent response rate) from 3,406 parents of kindergarten through sixth grade students in a large urban school district in California during the 1999–2000 school year. A 1-year survey (80.4 percent response rate) resulted in a final sample of 2,738. STUDY DESIGN: Data were analyzed using multiple regression models with robust estimation. The dependent variable was Time 2 parent reports of primary care experiences, assessed via the Parents' Perceptions of Primary Care (P3C) measure. The independent variables were financial access (insurance status), potential access (presence of a regular source of care), and realized access (foregone care), controlling for child and family characteristics (race/ethnicity, parent's language, mother's education level, and child chronic health condition status) and baseline P3C scores. DATA COLLECTION: Data were collected by mail, telephone, and in person in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Tagalog. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Controlling for baseline P3C scores and child and family characteristics, having no health insurance at both baseline and Time 2 was associated with a 6.2-point lower Time 2 P3C score, relative to having had health insurance at both time points. Having a regular provider at Time 2 (either always having had one or gaining one during the year) was associated with, on average, a 10-point higher Time 2 P3C score, compared to children without a regular provider (either never having had one or losing one during the year). Episodes of foregone care during the year were associated with 10.7 points lower Time 2 P3C scores, relative to children whose parents did not report foregone care. Similar relationships were found between all three measures of access to care and each of the sub-domain measures of primary care experience. CONCLUSIONS: Financial, potential, and realized access to care are associated prospectively with the full range of primary care experiences—comprehensiveness, communication, coordination, and contextual knowledge—beyond continuity and accessibility. Access to a regular source of care and to needed care are each associated with larger effects on primary care experiences than is the presence of health insurance. Gaining insurance or a regular source of care results in primary care experiences similar to always having had these, while losing a regular source of care has a more immediate effect than losing insurance on primary care experiences

Curriculum structure:principles and strategy

This report provides general guidelines for the structure of a curriculum, followed by specific advice on the principles of learning and teaching, the process of restructuring and change leadership and management. It provides examples of several educational philosophies, including vertical and horizontal integration. It discusses the use of competence, learning outcomes, level of degree and assessment and provides a number of recommendations. It does not seek to be prescriptive of time allocation to disciplines within a curriculum. Although this report has been written primarily for those who will develop an undergraduate curriculum, the information may be sufficiently generic to apply to the recent development in graduate entry ('shortened dental' or 'accelerated') courses and to postgraduate degree planning and higher education certificate or diploma courses for other dental care professionals (auxiliaries). The report may have a European bias as progress is made to converge and enhance educational standards in 29 countries with different educational approaches - a microcosm of global collaboration. © 2008 Blackwell Munksgaard and The American Dental Education Association

Evaluation of a National Curriculum Reform Effort for the Medicine Core Clerkship

BACKGROUND: In 1995, the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) and the Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine (CDIM) developed and disseminated a new model curriculum for the medicine core clerkship that was designed to enhance learning of generalist competencies and increase interest in general internal medicine. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the dissemination and use of the resulting SGIM/CDIM Core Medicine Clerkship Curriculum Guide. DESIGN: Survey of internal medicine clerkship directors at the 125 medical schools in the United States. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: The questionnaire elicited information about the use and usefulness of the Guide and each of its components, barriers to effective use of the Guide, and outcomes associated with use of the Guide. Responses were received from 95 clerkship directors, representing 88 (70%) of the 125 medical schools. Eighty-seven (92%) of the 95 respondents were familiar with the Guide, and 80 respondents had used it. The 4 components used most frequently were the basic generalist competencies (used by 83% of those familiar with the Guide), learning objectives for these competencies (used by 83%), learning objectives for training problems (used by 70%), and specific training problems (used by 67%); 74% to 85% of those using these components found them moderately or very useful. The most frequently identified barriers to use of the Guide were insufficient faculty time, insufficient number of ambulatory care preceptors and training sites, and need for more faculty development. About 30% or more of those familiar with the Guide reported that use of the Guide was associated with improved ability to meet clerkship accreditation criteria, improved performance of students on the clerkship exam, and increased clerkship time devoted to ambulatory care. CONCLUSION: This federally supported initiative that engaged the collaborative efforts of the SGIM and the CDIM was successful in facilitating significant changes in the medicine core clerkship across the United States

A vision of dental education in the third millennium

This paper is the last in a series of 16 which have explored current uses of information communications technology (ICT) in all areas of dentistry in general, and in dental education in particular. In this paper the authors explore current developments, referring back to the previous 15 papers, and speculate on how ICT should increasingly contribute to dental education in the future. After describing a vision of dental education in the next 50 years, the paper considers how ICT can help to fulfil the vision. It then takes a brief look at three aspects of the use of ICT in the world in general and speculates how dentistry can learn from other areas of human endeavour. Barriers to the use of ICT in dental education are then discussed. The final section of the paper outlines new developments in haptics, immersive environments, the semantic web, the IVIDENT project, nanotechnology and ergonometrics. The paper concludes that ICT will offer great opportunities to dental education but questions whether or not human limitations will allow it to be used to maximum effect