Perceptions of graduating students from eight medical schools in Vietnam on acquisition of key skills identified by teachers

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The eight main Vietnamese medical schools recently cooperated to produce a book listing the knowledge, attitudes and skills expected of a graduate, including specification of the required level for each skill. The teaching program should ensure that students can reach that level. The objective of this study was to determine the perception of graduating students on whether they had achieved the level set for a selection of clinical and public health skills as a guide for the schools to adjust either the levels or the teaching.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>From all eight schools, 1136 of the 1528 final year students completed questionnaires just before completed all the requirements for graduation, a response rate of 87% overall (ranging from 74–99% per school). They rated their own competence on a scale of 0–5 for 129 skills selected from the 557 skills listed in the book, and reported where they thought they had learned them. The scores that the students gave themselves were then compared to the levels proposed by the teachers for each skill. The proportions of the self-assessed achievement to the levels expected by the teachers, means self-assessed scores and the coefficients of variation were calculated to make comparisons among disciplines, among schools and among learning sites.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Most students felt they had learned most of the skills for key clinical departments to the required level; this varied little among the schools. Self-assessed skill acquisition in public health and minor clinical disciplines was lower and varied more. Sites outside the classroom were especially important for learning skills. The results revealed key similarities and differences between the teachers and the students in their perception about what could be learned and where</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Revising a curriculum for medical schools demands inputs from all stakeholders. Graduating class students can provide valuable feedback on what they have learned in the existing system. Learning objectives should always be checked with students who have followed their study under existing teaching conditions. The information from the graduates helped to identify potential problem areas where either the objectives or the teaching need adjustment.</p

Learning physical examination skills outside timetabled training sessions: what happens and why?

Lack of published studies on students’ practice behaviour of physical examination skills outside timetabled training sessions inspired this study into what activities medical students undertake to improve their skills and factors influencing this. Six focus groups of a total of 52 students from Years 1–3 using a pre-established interview guide. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed using qualitative methods. The interview guide was based on questionnaire results; overall response rate for Years 1–3 was 90% (n = 875). Students report a variety of activities to improve their physical examination skills. On average, students devote 20% of self-study time to skill training with Year 1 students practising significantly more than Year 3 students. Practice patterns shift from just-in-time learning to a longitudinal selfdirected approach. Factors influencing this change are assessment methods and simulated/real patients. Learning resources used include textbooks, examination guidelines, scientific articles, the Internet, videos/DVDs and scoring forms from previous OSCEs. Practising skills on fellow students happens at university rooms or at home. Also family and friends were mentioned to help. Simulated/real patients stimulated students to practise of physical examination skills, initially causing confusion and anxiety about skill performance but leading to increased feelings of competence. Difficult or enjoyable skills stimulate students to practise. The strategies students adopt to master physical examination skills outside timetabled training sessions are self-directed. OSCE assessment does have influence, but learning takes place also when there is no upcoming assessment. Simulated and real patients provide strong incentives to work on skills. Early patient contacts make students feel more prepared for clinical practice

Progress towards a public chemogenomic set for protein kinases and a call for contributions

Protein kinases are highly tractable targets for drug discovery. However, the biological function and therapeutic potential of the majority of the 500+ human protein kinases remains unknown. We have developed physical and virtual collections of small molecule inhibitors, which we call chemogenomic sets, that are designed to inhibit the catalytic function of almost half the human protein kinases. In this manuscript we share our progress towards generation of a comprehensive kinase chemogenomic set (KCGS), release kinome profiling data of a large inhibitor set (Published Kinase Inhibitor Set 2 (PKIS2)), and outline a process through which the community can openly collaborate to create a KCGS that probes the full complement of human protein kinases

Metal recovery with ionic liquids in combination with electrohydrodynamic atomization

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Automatic quantification of epicardial fat volume on non-enhanced cardiac CT scans using a multi-atlas segmentation approach

Purpose: There is increasing evidence that epicardial fat (i.e., adipose tissue contained within the pericardium) plays an important role in the development of cardiovascular disease. Obtaining the epicardial fat volume from routinely performed non-enhanced cardiac CT scans is therefore of clinical interest. The purpose of this work is to investigate the feasibility of automatic pericardium segmentation and subsequent quantification of epicardial fat on non-enhanced cardiac CT scans. Methods: Imaging data of 98 randomly selected subjects belonging to a larger cohort of subjects who underwent a cardiac CT scan at our medical center were retrieved. The data were acquired on two different scanners. Automatic multi-atlas based method for segmenting the pericardium and calculating the epicardial fat volume has been developed. The performance of the method was assessed by (1) comparing the automatically segmented pericardium to a manually annotated reference standard, (2) comparin Results: Automatic segmentation of the pericardium was achieved with a Dice similarity index of 89.1 +/- 2.6% with respect to Observer 1 and 89.2 +/- 1.9% with respect to Observer 2. The correlation between the automatic method and the manual observers with respect to the epicardial fat volume computed as the Pearson's correlation coefficient (R) was 0.91 (P < 0.001) for both observers. The inter-observer study resulted in a Dice similarity index of 89.0 +/- 2.4% for segmenting the pericardium a Conclusions: The authors developed a fully automatic method that is capable of segmenting the pericardium and quantifying epicardial fat on non-enhanced cardiac CT scans. The authors demonstrated the feasibility of using this method to replace manual annotations by showing that the automatic method performs as good as manual annotation on a large dataset. (C) 2013 American Association of Physicists in Medicine