A review of the medical education literature for graduate medical education teachers.

BACKGROUND: A rapidly evolving body of literature in medical education can impact the practice of clinical educators in graduate medical education. OBJECTIVE: To aggregate studies published in the medical education literature in 2011 to provide teachers in general internal medicine with an overview of the current, relevant medical education literature. REVIEW: We systematically searched major medical education journals and the general clinical literature for medical education studies with sound design and relevance to the educational practice of graduate medical education teachers. We chose 12 studies, grouped into themes, using a consensus method, and critiqued these studies. RESULTS: Four themes emerged. They encompass (1) learner assessment, (2) duty hour limits and teaching in the inpatient setting, (3) innovations in teaching, and (4) learner distress. With each article we also present recommendations for how readers may use them as resources to update their clinical teaching. While we sought to identify the studies with the highest quality and greatest relevance to educators, limitation of the studies selected include their single-site and small sample nature, and the frequent lack of objective measures of outcomes. These limitations are shared with the larger body of medical education literature. CONCLUSIONS: The themes and the recommendations for how to incorporate this information into clinical teaching have the potential to inform the educational practice of general internist educators as well as that of teachers in other specialties.

Beyond paging: building a web-based communication tool for nurses and physicians.

INTRODUCTION: The traditional means of communication between nurses and physicians is through paging. This method is disruptive to the workflow of both professions and is too non-specific to be used for all types of messages. AIMS: We undertook a quality improvement project to streamline communication between nurses and trainees for urgent and non-urgent matters. We assessed user uptake and satisfaction with the new method. SETTING: A General Internal Medicine teaching unit in a tertiary care academic centre. METHODS: Through collaborative techniques, we developed a novel communication method that sends non-urgent messages to a Web-based task list and urgent messages to an alphanumeric pager. We implemented this new technology using a collaborative process between nurses and physicians to address all concerns. EVALUATION: Post-implementation surveillance indicated a high degree of uptake of the new practice. User surveys and focus groups showed a high level of satisfaction and a perceived decrease in interruptions to the workflow of both nurses and physicians with the new system. Usage data indicated that the new system may increase overall non-urgent communication. CONCLUSION: A Web-based system to triage urgent and non-urgent messages between nurses and physicians was developed collaboratively and implemented successfully to improve workflow for both groups.

The Bible on homosexuality: exploring its meaning and authority.

Even within this secular age the Bible is still referred to in controversial matters of ethics and morality. Nowhere is this more evident than in the debate over the acceptability or unacceptability of homosexuality. This paper evaluates the Bible's statements on homoeroticism by explaining their historical, cultural, linguistic and narrative contexts. It finds that while the Bible is silent on matters of orientation, it does seem to adopt a negative attitude toward at least male same-sex sexual encounters. This finding, however, is in itself irrelevant unless it is related to how communities use and make sense of the Bible. There are many biblical prohibitions and condemnations that are ignored by even the most fundamentalist Christian groups. Whether the biblical passages on homoeroticism are treated authoritatively or not rests ultimately on the outlook and interpretive framework used by a Christian community to make coherent sense of the Bible.