Healthy Skin: Cancer Education for School Teachers and Nurses Using a "Train and Equip" Method.

Skin cancer, especially malignant melanoma, continues on the increase. Different interventions are attempting to impact on this problem. The approach used by the Partners in Health Sciences program at the University of Arkansas for Medical Science is to both "train" and, importantly, "equip" classroom teachers and school nurses in a "Healthy Skin" professional development curriculum. Each participant not only received face-to-face interactive content training in a workshop setting that lasted 6 h; each also received a resource kit of supplies, materials, and equipment used in the workshop and designed for the trainee to use with students in a classroom/school setting. This single "hit" professional development event then can be replicated by each trainee annually for the span of her/his teaching/school-nursing career. A total of 588 trainees participated in "Healthy Skin" workshops that were held in 17 communities throughout the state. Participants attended from 188 different towns/cities. Of those in attendance, 511 (87 %) were females, 77 (13 %) males, 81 % Caucasian, 16 % African Americans, and the remaining 3 % self-identified as "other". There were 471 teachers, 85 nurses, and 32 "others" (administrators, school counselors). Trainees completed anonymous pre/post test measures with an increase in knowledge of 28.5 %. A short-term evaluation was conducted at the end of the workshop. After a minimum of 6 months had elapsed, a long-term evaluation was used to capture data on how the workshop experience transferred into new curricular/learning activities for the students of the workshop participants. There was a high level of satisfaction with the workshop experience and use of workshop content and resource kits. Our experiences in this type of professional development outreach provide a model of how institutions of higher education could contribute to the professional development of K-12 teachers and their students in any content area.

Student failures on first-year medical basic science courses and the USMLE step 1: a retrospective study over a 20-year period.

Correlates of achievement in the basic science years in medical school and on the Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination® (USMLE®), (Step 1) in relation to preadmission variables have been the subject of considerable study. Preadmissions variables such as the undergraduate grade point average (uGPA) and Medical College Admission Test® (MCAT®) scores, solely or in combination, have previously been found to be predictors of achievement in the basic science years and/or on the Step 1. The purposes of this retrospective study were to: (1) determine if our statistical analysis confirmed previously published relationships between preadmission variables (MCAT, uGPA, and applicant pool size), and (2) study correlates of the number of failures in five M1 courses with those preadmission variables and failures on Step 1. Statistical analysis confirmed previously published relationships between all preadmission variables. Only one course, Microscopic Anatomy, demonstrated significant correlations with all variables studied including the Step 1 failures. Physiology correlated with three of the four variables studied, but not with the Step 1 failures. Analyses such as these provide a tool by which administrators will be able to identify what courses are or are not responding in appropriate ways to changes in the preadmissions variables that signal student performance on the Step 1.

Healthy Lungs: cancer education for middle school teachers using a "train and equip" method.

Prevention of the initiation of tobacco use, which is associated with increased risk of developing cancer of the lung, the oral cavity, larynx, and emphysema, should target middle school-age children because that is where experimentation with tobacco use usually begins. Millions of children attending school do not receive proper education regarding the biological science of the human respiratory system coupled with the impact that tobacco use has at the cell, tissue, and organ levels of biological organization because their teachers are ill-prepared and ill-equipped to teach this normal and cancer-related content. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences has a statewide outreach program that provides middle school teachers training in a "Healthy Lungs" curriculum that covers the normal functional anatomy of the respiratory system as a basis for adding the effect of tobacco use and its associated cancers and emphysema. This training also provides each participant a resource kit of supplies, materials, and items of equipment. A long-term implementation survey identified a high degree of transference of content and use of the resource kit items into new classroom learning activities for the trainee's students for both the normal functional anatomy of the human respiratory system and associated general and cell/tissue/organ-specific cancer biology.

"Anatomizing" reversed: Use of examination questions that foster use of higher order learning skills by students.

"Anatomizing" is a new verb some use to describe the breaking apart of a complex entity such as the human body, into isolated tidbits of information for study, which can never equal the complex, integrated whole. Although popular with first-year medical students, this practice of "tidbitting" anatomical information into easy to memorize facts or tables of facts does not prepare medical students for the inevitable task of dealing with the integrated structure-function of the human body, both normal and diseased, as patient managers. Examination questions drive the cognitive methods students will use to learn content. Asking students on examinations for recall of previously memorized tidbits fosters the cognitive learning behavior of only memorization. Examination questions, however, can be constructed that assess student understanding and integration of the content, that is, student use of cognitive and metacognitive methods of higher order learning that will foster high-quality learning producing better practitioners and lifelong learners. This kind of efficient student learning needs to begin in the first year of medical school.Learning more efficiently and at deeper levels of understanding is especially pertinent as the contact hours in anatomy courses continue to decrease.

Functional anatomy of the cardiovascular system: professional development for PreK-3 teachers using a "train and equip" method results in learning opportunities for students.

Preadolescent students are interested in learning the structure and function of the human body. However, their teachers are not trained in this content. The purpose of this project was to expand a successful outreach effort in the health sciences for grade 7-12 teachers to include PreK-3 teachers. A "Healthy Hearts" workshop was offered to train the teachers in relevant content and also to give them a resource kit of supplies and equipment to facilitate the transference of the training into educational opportunities for their students. The workshop included many role-playing activities and use of all items in the resource kit. A total of 25 workshops were conducted in 14 different community locations with 716 PreK-3 teachers attending from 169 communities representing 59 (79%) of the state's 75 counties. African American (AA) teacher participation was 35%, twice the state AA population rate and 3.5x the AA public school teacher rate. Pre to Posttest scores increased an average of 15%. The results of the evaluation measures regarding the workshop and the transference of the training and use of resource kit items into learning opportunities for students were excellent. Universities have the capability, perhaps the responsibility, to provide the much-needed professional development training to PreK-12 teachers. Anatomists in medical and nonmedical school settings are well positioned to participate in this process and help close the gap between the interest young children have in learning about the human body and the lack of teacher training in this content.

A study of student performance on self-scheduled, computer-based examinations in a medical histology course: is later better?

BACKGROUND: Student self-scheduling of computer-based examinations during a defined window of opportunity is a protocol used by some medical school courses and licensing bodies. Students scheduling late have more time to prepare, which may provide them with an unfair advantage. METHODS: ANOVA was used to compare the average scores of three different cohorts of test-takers (early, middle and late) on 13 Microscopic Anatomy exams taken over a 3-year period (2003-2005) at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. RESULTS: On 11 of the 13 exams, the average score of students who took the exam last was lower than that of students who took the exam first. These differences were significant for eight (73%) exams. There were two exams on which the average score of students who took the exam last was higher than that of students who took the exam first, but these differences were not significant. CONCLUSIONS: Scheduling exams late in the window of opportunity does not appear to provide a performance advantage and may even be detrimental since these students are responsible for new content information in the course and in other concurrently running courses while they are preparing for a 'late' exam.

Learning syndromes afflicting beginning medical students: identification and treatment--reflections after forty years of teaching.

During 40 years experience teaching beginning medical students primarily microscopic anatomy (cell biology, histology and embryology), but also occasionally neuroanatomy and gross anatomy and while serving as the course director for Microscopic Anatomy for 18 years and counseling students with academic performance problems, a set of syndromes were identified that impact on student learning. Each of these syndromes were given names reflective of the underlying problem, i.e. 'Oh Yeah', 'Too Many Books', 'Six Chambered Heart', 'Old Test Question', 'Slip and Slide', etc. syndromes. In this paper each syndrome is presented and discussed and specific treatments for each syndrome are presented. In addition, advice for beginning medical students on how to study ('The Split Brain' method), developed in association with the treatments for the syndromes, is presented.

Partners in research: benefits of a summer research program.

BACKGROUND: The Partners in Research program provides first-hand research experiences for medical, pharmacy, and African-American undergraduate students. METHODS: During ten weeks, students participate in on-going cancer research, weekly educational sessions, two observational clinic sessions, and at least one patient support-community outreach clinic. RESULTS: Over the past six years the program has enrolled 155 students. Surveys indicate that most students give the course high ratings and would recommend the course to their peers. Follow-up shows their continued interest in research. CONCLUSIONS: The program will encourage students to pursue careers in cancer research and provide a solid base of knowledge to future health care professionals.

Cancer education and cancer prevention education for K-12 students and teachers.

BACKGROUND: A health science educational outreach program which began in 1991 and targets K-12 teachers and students has had 15,911 participants consume 60,069 hours of education as of the end of December 2003. The program is called the "Partners in Health Sciences" (PIHS) program. Many educational activities in the PIHS program contain information on both cancer biology and cancer prevention. METHODS: All of the cancer-related education offered and consumed in the history of the PIHS program was identified and quantified. RESULTS: In the PIHS program 984 K-12 teachers and 2,376 grade 7-12 students consumed 4,477 and 3,029 hours of cancer-related education, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Cancer education encompasses much more than cancer prevention education and includes different aspects of cancer biology from the cell to the organism levels of biological organization. Selected topics in cancer biology can be used to motivate K-12 teachers and students to learn more about basic normal biology while simultaneously learning about cancer. In addition, the psychosocial impact of cancer on the individual, the family, and the community can be used to foster K-12 student interest in studying behavioral science.

Anatomy of a successful K-12 educational outreach program in the health sciences: eleven years experience at one medical sciences campus.

The Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, College of Medicine, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) is the administrative home of a nationally recognized educational outreach program in the health sciences for K-12 teachers (includes school nurses, counselors, etc.) and students. This program is called the Partners in Health Sciences (PIHS) program. It began in the summer of 1991 and is based on an annual needs assessment of the state's teachers. PIHS is a program available to all teachers and students in the state. It has several different components: (1) a cafeteria of 21 days of mini-courses offered in the summer to meet the professional development needs of K-12 biology/health teachers and other school personnel; (2) weekly, interactive telecommunication broadcasts for students during the academic year; (3) intensive, 5-day workshops that train five selected teachers at a time (10 per year) to use an authoring software program to develop grade-appropriate interactive, computer-assisted, instructional (CAI) modules for Internet (http://k14education.uams.edu) use by teachers and students; (4) a monthly science night for students and their parents at a local science magnet high school; (5) field trips to the UAMS campus for teachers and their students; (6) community-requested presentations by program faculty; and (7) availability of earning undergraduate and graduate credit for science education majors in the College of Education, University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The data presented in this report span the period from 1991 through 2001. For all program activities, 14,084 different participants have consumed a total of 50,029 hours of education.