Improving the teaching skills of residents as tutors/facilitators and addressing the shortage of faculty facilitators for PBL modules

BACKGROUND: Residents play an important role in teaching of medical undergraduate students. Despite their importance in teaching undergraduates they are not involved in any formal training in teaching and leadership skills. We aimed to compare the teaching skills of residents with faculty in facilitating small group Problem Based Learning (PBL) sessions. METHODS: This quasi experimental descriptive comparative research involved 5 postgraduate year 4 residents and five senior faculty members. The study was conducted with all phase III (Final year) students rotating in Gastroenterology. The residents and faculty members received brief training of one month in facilitation and core principles of adult education. Different aspects of teaching skills of residents and faculty were evaluated by students on a questionnaire (graded on Likert Scale from 1 to 10) assessing i) Knowledge Base-content Learning (KBL), ii) PBL, iii) Student Centered Learning (SCL) and iv) Group Skills (GS). RESULTS: There were 33 PBL teaching sessions in which 120 evaluation forms were filled; out of these 53% forms were filled for residents and 47% for faculty group. The faculty showed a statistically greater rating in KBL (faculty 8.37 Vs resident 7.94; p-value 0.02), GS (faculty 8.06 vs. residents 7.68; p-value 0.04). Differences in faculty and resident scores in the PBL and SCL were not significant. The overall score of faculty facilitators, however, was statistically significant for resident facilitators. (p = .05). CONCLUSION: 1) Residents are an effective supplement to faculty members for PBL; 2) Additional facilitators for PBL sessions can be identified in an institution by involvement of residents in teacher training workshop

Chlamydial Pre-Infection Protects From Subsequent Herpes Simplex Virus-2 Challenge in a Murine Vaginal Super-Infection Model

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Chlamydia trachomatis and Herpes Simplex Virus-2 (HSV-2) genital tract co-infections have been reported in humans and studied in vitro but the clinical consequences are unknown. Limited epidemiologic evidence suggests that these co-infections could be more severe than single infections of either pathogen, but the host-pathogen interactions during co-infection remain uncharacterized. To determine whether disease progression and/or pathogen shedding differs between singly-infected and super-infected animals, we developed an in vivo super-infection model in which female BALB/c mice were vaginally infected with Chlamydia muridarum (Cm) followed later by HSV-2. Pre-infection with Chlamydia 3 or 9 days prior to HSV-2 super-infection conferred significant protection from HSV-2-induced neurologic disease and significantly reduced viral recovery compared to HSV-2 singlyinfected controls. Neither protection from mortality nor reduced viral recovery were observed when mice were i) super-infected with HSV-2 on day 27 post Cm; ii) infected with UV-irradiated Cm and super-infected with HSV-2; or iii) azithromycin-treated prior to HSV-2 super-infection. Therefore, protection from HSV-2-induced disease requires active infection with viable chlamydiae and is not observed after chlamydial shedding ceases, either naturally or due to antibiotic treatment. Thus, Chlamydia-induced protection is transient and requires the continued presence of chlamydiae or their components. These data demonstrate that chlamydial pre-infection can alter progression of subsequent HSV-2 infection, with implications for HSV-2 transmission from co-infected humans

Competencies and Practices in Academic Engineering Leadership Development: Lessons from a National Survey

Traditionally, higher education has relied on recruiting executive leaders based largely on scholarly credibility, expecting leadership competency to develop with “on the job” experience. This approach is risky to organizational success. Building upon research about how institutional leaders identify, select, develop, and support those in succession, this study aims (1) to explore how senior academic leaders in engineering perceive their leadership roles, specifically the importance they attribute to various leadership skills and their self-confidence in exercising those skills, and (2) to discern the prevalence of mentoring and sponsorship practices those leaders use as part of their leadership portfolio. Results of a national survey, distributed in collaboration with the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) to leaders in academic engineering in North America, confirm the importance of select leadership skills, including practices related to the mentoring and sponsorship of emerging leaders. However, the reported prevalence of those practices was relatively low in this sample. The authors recommend holding leaders accountable for developing future leaders and present an instrument for self- and organizational assessment of such practices for use in implementing more intentional approaches to leadership development in higher education