The digital age: is this the future of medical education? A cross-sectional study to assess medical students' opinions about e-learning in psychiatry undergraduate medical education.

OBJECTIVES: The main objectives were to assess medical students' opinions about e-learning in psychiatry undergraduate medical education, and to investigate a possible relationship between learning styles and preferences for learning modalities. METHOD: During the academic year 2009/2010, all 231 senior Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) medical students in their penultimate year of study were invited to answer a questionnaire that was posted online on Moodle, the RCSI virtual learning environment. RESULTS: In all, 186 students responded to the questionnaire, a response rate of 80%. Significantly more students stated a preference for live psychiatry tutorials over e-learning lectures. Students considered flexible learning, having the option of viewing material again and the ability to learn at one's own pace with e-learning lectures, to be more valuable than having faster and easier information retrieval. CONCLUSION: Students prefer traditional in-class studying, even when they are offered a rich e-learning environment. Understanding students' learning styles has been identified as an important element for e-learning development, delivery and instruction, which can lead to improved student performance.

An approach to the education about, and assessment of, attitudes in undergraduate medical education.

BACKGROUND: Attitudes have been shown to be important determinants of the quality and efficacy of medical care. There is little research on the education about, and assessment of, attitudes in undergraduate medical education. AIM: To describe the design and delivery of an attitude awareness workshop, and the associated objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) station used as the assessment tool. METHODS: Development, delivery, assessment and evaluation of an attitude awareness workshop were performed. RESULTS: Data are presented from 144 students. In 1999, the overall mean OSCE score was 62.44% (SD 7.6, n=73). The mean score for the attitude station was 57.97% (SD 12.9). In 2000, these figures were 67.11% (SD 8.3, n=71) and 73.75% (SD 10.8) respectively. In 1998/99, the average mark out of 10 for the educational quality of the attitude workshop was 6.6 and in 1999/00 this rose to 7.8. CONCLUSION: Development of both an educational and assessment programme concerning attitudes appears feasible.

Indicators of differences in immunization rates of Mexican American and white non-Hispanic infants in a Medicaid managed care system.

Immunization levels of Mexican American and white non-Hispanic infants enrolled in Arizona's Medicaid managed care demonstration project, a prototype of the model proposed for a reformed health care system, were compared and the influence of sociodemographic characteristics, acculturation levels, health beliefs of the mothers, and infant health status on immunization levels were assessed. The study used data collected from office records, birth certificates, and household interviews. The random sample included 292 white non-Hispanic and 274 Mexican American infants. White non-Hispanic infants received more immunizations by age 1 than the Mexican American infants. However, after controlling for a full set of explanatory variables in a multiple regression analysis, ethnicity was no longer a significant predictor of immunization levels. Significant predictors of a higher number of immunizations included fewer siblings, older maternal age, and higher maternal education. Health insurance and enrollment in a managed care plan were not sufficient to ensure adequate immunization of these Medicaid enrolled infants. Results are discussed in terms of previous research and the essential functions of public health as outlined in the Institute of Medicine's Report on the Future of Public Health.