Job sharing as an employment alternative in group medical practice.

Although physicians discuss quality-of-life and employment issues with their patients, they often fail to consider flexible scheduling and reduced employment options to lessen their own job stress. We examined one of these options by surveying two community-based, private practice groups with a combined 13-year experience with job sharing. We found that a majority of respondents rated job sharing as successful, and most wanted it to continue. Job sharers derived considerable personal benefit from the arrangement and had significantly more positive attitudes toward work than full-time physicians. Job sharing appeared to have little impact on practice parameters. Dependability, flexibility and willingness to cooperate were the most important attributes in choosing a job-sharing partner. Job sharing is an employment alternative worth exploring to retain physicians in medical group practice.

A survey of Cleveland Clinic training-program alumni. Implications for evaluation of graduate medical education.

The graduate of a medical training program is in a unique position to evaluate that program in comparison with the realities of medical practice. A survey of alumni of the Cleveland Clinic's graduate training programs was conducted in September 1986. The alumni's perceptions of the quality of their programs and the educational services provided by the Division of Education are discussed in relation to the educational administrative structure and evaluation process at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation. The need for such evaluation methods, as well as additional techniques to provide a comprehensive evaluation system in graduate medical education, is emphasized.

Marketing issues in continuing medical education.

Marketing is an important component of continuing medical education (CME). However, marketing is more than the identification of methods to recover costs of delivering programming. It focuses on meeting the needs and desires of physician participants, identifying an appropriate location, satisfying the goals of a sponsoring institution, and making an effect on the quality of care given by receivers and deliverers of CME. This paper discusses these issues as well as describes results of a survey designed to gather opinions on CME activities from alumni of training programs of a large, referral-based, multispecialty group practice. The data suggest that CME programs should be targeted to certain specialty groups as determined by field of training rather than practice specialty. Physicians' preferences for CME activities held at resort settings should be considered. Finally, participation in CME may itself be a marketing tool for a sponsoring institution to increase referrals.

A comparison of the perceptual skills of physicians and medical illustrators.

A medical illustrator uses visual aids to communicate with other medical professionals and with the lay public. These visual aids are designed and executed in such a way that others can better perceive and understand difficult concepts and procedures. Because medical illustrations reflect a subjective interpretation of reality, it is important to ascertain if medical illustrators as a group perceive things as others do. The study reported here determined whether medical illustrators perceive simple visual patterns differently than do physicians or lay people not involved in medicine or art.

Development of an instrument to identify attitudes of family practice and other physicians: a pilot study.

Research has shown that characteristic attitudes can be attributed to certain medical specialties and can affect specialty selection. The purpose of this study was to develop an attitude scale that would discriminate between family practice and other physician groups on current health care issues. From a sample of 490 randomly selected physicians, 40 percent (N = 193) responded to the study instrument, a 44-item, five-point Likert scale in which physicians were asked their level of agreement on various statements. One-way analyses of variance were performed on responses to each item by family centered nature of practice and specialty. Ten statements were found to significantly differentiate physicians who were family centered from physicians who were not family centered. Statements showed that family centered practitioners were confident in their competence and in their role as an essential medical practitioner. They also expressed more awareness of a patient's response and total well-being. Responses also suggest that there is acknowledgement of supposed family medicine issues by all physicians.

Academic programming for child life education: a case study.

The Child Life Education Program at Case Western Reserve University provides a case study of the development of an innovative academic program for health professionals. This article describes the process of curriculum development and the integration of the curriculum into an existing academic program. The interdisciplinary and individualized nature of the program increases the likelihood of meeting the unique needs of health care workers. From the institutional perspective, benefits include improved communication between students, faculty, and departments, often resulting in expanded learning experiences and flexible approaches to the utilization of existing resources within a university.

The development of an education program in the pediatric emergency department.

The pediatric emergency department is a major educational resource in ambulatory pediatrics. A literature review indicates a lack of programs based on the identification of specific educational objectives in this setting. A model educational program for third-year pediatric clinical clerks and pediatric level I and II house officers is presented. Learning is defined in three areas: patient management, behavioral care needs, and hospital and community health care needs. Information on specific educational goals and objectives, learning experiences derived from them, and methods for evaluation of learning is provided.