Development and Validation of a Scale to Measure Nurse/Medical Resident Physician Collaboration.

Introduction: The purpose of this pilot study is to investigate the reliability of an interprofessional collaboration measurement scale used for nursing interactions with resident physicians. To date, the collaboration between nurses and residents has not been adequately investigated and a validated tool specifically for this purpose is not yet available. Our objective is to adapt a previously validated interprofessional scale for health care settings to the specific nurse/resident physician collaboration. Methods: In 2019, nurses from two hospitals were contacted via email and were invited to complete an anonymous survey that asked about the nurses' interaction and collaboration with resident physicians. Results: Our inquiry of 850 nurses with 59 completing a survey, returned a response rate of about 7%. Internal consistency for the scale was very high (alpha = 0.92) with no single item disproportionally reducing the reliability of the scale. Conclusion: Despite the limited sample size of the present pilot study, this scale was effective for examining nurse/resident collaboration. Further research will seek to expand our sample size and include measures of concurrent validity.

Magic Medicine.

Background: A superstition is a belief or practice that is considered irrational, resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance or a false conception of causation. In medical settings superstitions often arise from attempts to assign causation to events that are either random, or in which all information is not available. In this manuscript, we present a descriptive review of the literature related to superstition in medicine and present the results of our own data; that one's age is equal to the chance of being admitted from the emergency department. Methods: In the descriptive review of superstitious beliefs in medicine, we identified 295 articles in which specific superstitions were studied. These articles were then organized by field and specific superstition. To investigate the age and admission correlation, we retrospectively quarried over 250,000 charts. Results: 295 papers on specific medical superstitions were reviewed and presented according to specialty, population and commonly investigated superstitions. Psychiatry had the largest number of articles addressing superstitious behavior, followed by OB/GYN. Importantly, significant heterogeneity exist within these papers suggesting that superstitious beliefs can be found in all fields of medicine. In addition, our data did not support the superstition that a patient's age will mirror their admission rate. Conclusions: The majority of the superstitions identified were "harmless" in that they would not result in significant patient harm. The exponential growth in medical knowledge presents a challenge for many to stay up to date. Our findings suggest a need for a continued emphasis of scientific literacy among physicians and further establish the expectation that physicians be engaged in consuming the latest scientific evidence in their field.

Factors important to applicants to osteopathic versus allopathic emergency medicine residency programs.

INTRODUCTION: Our objective is to evaluate the factors important to osteopathic applicants when selecting an American College of Osteopathic Emergency Physicians accredited emergency medicine (EM) residency and to compare these results with previous allopathic EM studies. METHODS: We gave osteopathic applicants a survey during interview season to be filled out anonymously at the end of their interview day. This survey included 18 factors which the applicants were asked to rank between 1 ("not very important") to 4 ("very important"). We then compared results to prior results of the same survey. RESULTS: Forty applicants (67%) out of 60 completed the survey. From these individuals, we noticed differences in the top factors listed by the applicants when compared to allopathic interviewees, the most notable being the unimportance of geographic location of the program to osteopathic applicants as manifested by osteopathic student average score of 2.8 (standard deviation 0.75) verses allopathic student average of 3.6 (standard deviation 0.06). CONCLUSION: Of the top 5 factors listed by the applicants, only 1 (AOA-approved residency) is an objective factor that the program has a role in controlling. The remainder are mainly subjective factors based on applicant's perceptions of the program.