The Hidden Burden: Qualitative Differences in How URiM Students Experience the Clinical Microenvironment.

INTRODUCTION: It is well documented that medical students who identify as underrepresented in medicine are more likely to encounter social challenges in the clinical environment. Successful navigation of these challenges requires a social and emotional agility that is unmeasured in traditional metrics of success. The effects of this requirement has not yet been explored. The authors therefore set out to investigate the variations in experiences that exist between underrepresented minority students in medicine (URiM) and white students, and to determine if there was a difference in the quantitative performance evaluations applied to both groups of students. METHODS: This was a mixed-methods study. In the quantitative portion, the authors retrospectively analyzed the standardized patient encounter scores of medical students from a single medical school in Michigan during the years of 2016 to 2018. The authors used multivariable ordinary least squares regression models to evaluate the differences in scores by race. In the qualitative portion, students volunteered to be interviewed and self-identified their race and gender. The authors employed semi-structured interview techniques to gather information about how the student felt their cultural or ethnic background affected their experience in the clinical environment. RESULTS: For the quantitative portion of this study, the authors analyzed the scores of 534 students over 4 different standardized patient encounters. The average score across all 4 standardized patient encounters was 88.7 (SD=5.6). The average score across all 4 standardized patient encounters for white students was 89 (SD=5.3), Black 87.9 (SD=7.4) Twenty-four students participated in the semi-structured interviews. Participants described feeling that the way their assessors interacted with them was largely affected by their race or gender. They also described feeling tension between how they would usually express themselves and how they were expected to in the clinical environment. When probed further, participants described various methods of adaptation to this tension including changing their hair or natural style of speech and modifying their perception of their role in the clinical environment.

How Do Programs Measure Resident Performance? A Multi-Institutional Inventory of General Surgery Assessments.

OBJECTIVE: To perform an inventory of assessment tools in use at surgical residency programs and their alignment with the Milestone Competencies. DESIGN: We conducted an inventory of all assessment tools from a sample of general surgery training programs participating in a multi-center study of resident operative development in the United States. Each instrument was categorized using a data extraction tool designed to identify criteria for effective assessment in competency based education and according to which Milestone Competency was being evaluated. Tabulations of each category were then analyzed using descriptive statistics. Interviews with program directors and assessment coordinators were conducted to understand each instrument's intended use within each program. SETTING: Multi-institutional review of general surgery assessment programs. PARTICIPANTS: We identified assessment tools used by 10 general surgery programs during the 2019 to 2020 academic year. Programs were selected from a cohort already participating in a separate research study of resident operative development in the United States. RESULTS: We identified 42 unique assessment tools used. Each program used an average of 7.2 (range 4-13) unique assessment instruments to measure performance, of which only 5 (11.9%) were used by at least 1 other program in our sample. Of all assessments, 59.5% were used monthly or less frequently. The majority (66.7%) of instruments were retrospective global assessments, rather than discrete observed performances. There were 4 (9.5%) instruments with established reliability or validity evidence. Across programs there was also significant variation in the volume of assessment used to evaluate residents, with the median total number of evaluations/trainee across all Milestone Competencies being 217 (IQR 78) per year. Patient care was the most frequently evaluated Milestone Competency. CONCLUSIONS: General surgical assessment systems predominantly employ non-standardized global assessment tools that lack reliability or validity evidence. This variability makes it challenging to interpret and compare competency standards across programs. A standardized assessment toolkit with established reliability and validity evidence would allow training programs to measure the competence of their trainees more uniformly and understand where improvements in our training system can be made.

Quantifying the annual incidence and underestimation of seasonal influenza: A modelling approach.

BACKGROUND: Seasonal influenza poses a significant public health and economic burden, associated with the outcome of infection and resulting complications. The true burden of the disease is difficult to capture due to the wide range of presentation, from asymptomatic cases to non-respiratory complications such as cardiovascular events, and its seasonal variability. An understanding of the magnitude of the true annual incidence of influenza is important to support prevention and control policy development and to evaluate the impact of preventative measures such as vaccination. METHODS: We use a dynamic disease transmission model, laboratory-confirmed influenza surveillance data, and randomized-controlled trial (RCT) data to quantify the underestimation factor, expansion factor, and symptomatic influenza illnesses in the US and Canada during the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 influenza seasons. RESULTS: Based on 2 case definitions, we estimate between 0.42-3.2% and 0.33-1.2% of symptomatic influenza illnesses were laboratory-confirmed in Canada during the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 seasons, respectively. In the US, we estimate between 0.08-0.61% and 0.07-0.33% of symptomatic influenza illnesses were laboratory-confirmed in the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 seasons, respectively. We estimated the symptomatic influenza illnesses in Canada to be 0.32-2.4 million in 2011-2012 and 1.8-8.2 million in 2012-2013. In the US, we estimate the number of symptomatic influenza illnesses to be 4.4-34 million in 2011-2012 and 23-102 million in 2012-2013. CONCLUSIONS: We illustrate that monitoring a representative group within a population may aid in effectively modelling the transmission of infectious diseases such as influenza. In particular, the utilization of RCTs in models may enhance the accuracy of epidemiological parameter estimation.