The desirable qualities of future doctors: a study of medical student perceptions

Background: There is a lack of consensus regarding the qualities possessed by the ideal doctor, and very limited research regarding the views of medical students on these qualities. Aims: To investigate the views of commencing medical students regarding the desirable qualities of doctors Methods: A survey containing a set of proposed desirable qualities of doctors identified from the existing literature was completed by 158 first year medical students. Results: The survey had a 75% response rate. Students rated the individual qualities of empathy, motivation to be a doctor, good verbal communication, ethically sound, integrity and honesty as the most important. A factor analysis identified six categories of qualities: Methodical Processing, Cognitive Capacity, People Skills, Generic Work Ethic, Role Certainty and Warmth. Significant differences in factor scores were found across subgroups of students (international and domestic students, with and without prior tertiary studies) on the following factors: Methodical Processing, which was scored highest by domestic students with prior tertiary studies, Cognitive Capacity, which was scored highest by domestic students without prior tertiary studies and Generic Work Ethic, which was scored highest by international students. Conclusions: Medical students identified a range of desirable personal qualities of a doctor which varied according to student characteristics, including their prior educational experience. Future research aiming to define such desirable qualities should include a broader range of stakeholders, including students at different training levels and institutions

Performance of the ATLAS Detector using First Collision Data

More than half a million minimum-bias events of LHC collision data were collected by the ATLAS experiment in December 2009 at centre-of-mass energies of 0.9 TeV and 2.36 TeV. This paper reports on studies of the initial performance of the ATLAS detector from these data. Comparisons between data and Monte Carlo predictions are shown for distributions of several track- and calorimeter-based quantities. The good performance of the ATLAS detector in these first data gives confidence for successful running at higher energies

Measurement of the W -> lv and Z/gamma* -> ll production cross sections in proton-proton collisions at root s=7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

First measurements of the W → ℓν and Z/γ * → ℓℓ (ℓ = e, μ) production cross sections in proton-proton collisions at √ s = 7TeV are presented using data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The results are based on 2250 W → ℓν and 179 Z/γ* → ℓℓ candidate events selected from a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 320 nb-1. The measured total W and Z/ γ*-boson production cross sections times the respective leptonic branching ratios for the combined electron and muon channels are σtotW · BR(W → ℓν) = 9.96 ± 0.23(stat) ± 0.50(syst) ± 1.10(lumi) nb and σtotZ/γ* · BR(Z/ γ* → ℓℓ) = 0.82 ± 0.06 (stat) ± 0.05 (syst) ± 0.09 (lumi) nb (within the invariant mass window 66 < mℓℓ < 116 GeV). The W/Z cross-section ratio is measured to be 11.7 ± 0.9(stat) ± 0.4(syst). In addition, measurements of the W+ and W- production cross sections and of the lepton charge asymmetry are reported. Theoretical predictions based on NNLO QCD calculations are found to agree with the measurements