Myocardial function in experimental uraemic cardiomyopathy

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Waiving Technical Default: The Role of Agency Costs and Bank Regulations

This paper examines whether the characteristics of banks and borrowers are associated with banks' decisions to waive violations of debt covenants. The findings suggest that banks possess sufficient private information about firms, and they use this information in their waiver decisions. Banks' decisions to waive violations vary with the borrowers' agency costs, debt features, the banks' characteristics and regulatory circumstances, and the bank-firm business relationship. There is no evidence that syndicated loans, bank structure, and adverse economic conditions are significant determinants of the waiver decision. Research findings offer valuable insight into the theoretical and practical implications of debt covenants and agency costs. Copyright 2006 The Authors Journal compilation (c) 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

A Systematic Review of the Reliability of Objective Structured Clinical Examination Scores

Context The objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) is comprised of a series of simulations used to assess the skill of medical practitioners in the diagnosis and treatment of patients. It is often used in high‐stakes examinations and therefore it is important to assess its reliability and validity. Methods The published literature was searched (PsycINFO, PubMed) for OSCE reliability estimates (coefficient alpha and generalisability coefficients) computed either across stations or across items within stations. Coders independently recorded information about each study. A meta‐analysis of the available literature was computed and sources of systematic variance in estimates were examined. Results A total of 188 alpha values from 39 studies were coded. The overall (summary) alpha across stations was 0.66 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.62–0.70); the overall alpha within stations across items was 0.78 (95% CI 0.73–0.82). Better than average reliability was associated with a greater number of stations and a higher number of examiners per station. Interpersonal skills were evaluated less reliably across stations and more reliably within stations compared with clinical skills. Conclusions Overall scores on the OSCE are often not very reliable. It is more difficult to reliably assess communication skills than clinical skills when considering both as general traits that should apply across situations. It is generally helpful to use two examiners and large numbers of stations, but some OSCEs appear more reliable than others for reasons that are not yet fully understood