Revisiting Feed Forward: Promoting a Student-Centered Approach to Education Handoffs, Remediation, and Clerkship Success.

Issue: Throughout medical school, and especially during clerkships, students experience changing work and learning environments and are exposed to new academic, interpersonal, and professional challenges unique to clinical learning. Given the siloed nature of clinical rotations, students often "fall through the cracks" and may repeatedly struggle through clerkships without support and coaching from which they would otherwise benefit. Many institutions have grappled with creating feed forward processes, that is, educational handoffs in which information is shared among faculty about struggling students with the intention of providing longitudinal support to ensure their success, while protecting students from negative bias that may follow them throughout the remainder of their medical school tenure. Evidence: Here, the authors describe the feed forward processes of four medical schools. Each school's process relies on close collaboration between course directors and deans to identify students and develop intervention plans. Course leadership and administration are typically the primary drivers for long-term follow-up with students. The number of participants in the process varies, with only one school directly involving students. Two schools hold larger, regularly scheduled meetings with up to 12 faculty present in their institution's feed forward process. Across these institutions, students can "graduate" from the feed forward process once they achieve competency in the areas of concern. Implications: The authors believe the most important outcome achieved is the formalization and adherence to a feed forward process. Thus, risk to students in the form of negative bias is mitigated by the flow of information, the extent to which information is available, and permitting students to be part of the process. These exemplars give insight into variable approaches to feed forward systems adopted by medical schools and demonstrate highly visible methodologies by which educational leadership empower students and educators toward a shared goal of student progress and achievement.

Neurologic and neuroscience education: Mitigating neurophobia to mentor health care providers.

Neurologic disorders are among the most frequent causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States. Moreover, the current shortfall of neurologists is expected to worsen over the coming decade. As a consequence, many patients with neurologic disorders will be treated by physicians and primary care providers without formal neurologic training. Furthermore, a pervasive and well-described fear of neurology, termed neurophobia, has been identified in medical student cohorts, residents, and among general practitioners. In this article, members of the American Academy of Neurology A.B. Baker Section on Neurological Education review current guidelines regarding neurologic and neuroscience education, contextualize the genesis and the negative consequences of neurophobia, and provide strategies to mitigate it for purposes of mentoring future generations of health care providers.

Brain 18F-FDG-PET characteristics in patients with paraneoplastic neurological syndrome and its correlation with clinical and MRI findings.

AIM: This study aimed to examine the imaging characteristics and clinical and MRI correlates of brain F-fluorodeoxyglucose (F-FDG)-PET imaging in patients with paraneoplatic neurological syndrome. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data of patients diagnosed with paraneoplastic neurological syndrome were retrospectively reviewed using the electronic medical records of the patients, looking specifically at records of hospital stays, laboratory findings and imaging reports. Both brain MRI and F-FDG-PET imaging characteristics were analyzed and compared. RESULTS: A total of 19 patients (ages 26-78; 13 female and six male patients) with clinical diagnoses of PNS were analyzed in this study. Limbic encephalitis (paraneoplastic limbic encephalitis) was found in 10 patients, seven of whom had a diagnosis of cancer. Brain F-FDG-PET showed bilaterally increased mesial temporal F-FDG uptake in eight of 10 patients with limbic encephalitis; seven of these eight patients exhibited memory loss. There was also a notable reduction in general cortical F-FDG uptake (including in the primary visual cortex) in six of the 10 patients with limbic encephalitis; three of the six patients had their primary motor cortices spared, two of them being spared bilaterally. Five of the seven limbic encephalitis patients with diagnosed cancer and two of the three without it had the aforementioned cortical and temporal lobe findings. Of the eight patients with onconeuronal antibodies, seven had temporal lobe enhancement and a total of six had diffuse cortical dysfunction. One patient with paraneoplastic limbic encephalitis without antibodies had demonstrated severely increased F-FDG uptake in both occipital lobes extending to the temporal lobes. The other patient without antibodies had a normal PET scan. Only one patient among four with paraneoplastic cerebellar degeneration had demonstrated decreased cerebellar uptake on F-FDG-PET that correlated with atrophy of the cerebellar vermis on MRI. Three patients had a clinical diagnosis of sensory neuropathy, of whom one demonstrated mild bilateral decrease in F-FDG uptake in the mesial temporal lobes, one showed notable increase in F-FDG uptake in the right mesial temporal lobe (with normal MRI) and the other had a normal brain F-FDG-PET. One patient was found to have cerebellar findings paired with oculomotor findings and showed increased F-FDG uptake in the cerebellum. One patient with stiff-person syndrome had normal brain F-FDG-PET. CONCLUSION: The pattern of abnormalities in the brain F-FDG-PET images usually correlates well with the corresponding clinical settings and presentations. Although quite frequently findings correlate with those of MRI, at times F-FDG-PET can demonstrate functional abnormality in the absence of any MRI finding, which could give a therapeutic window before anatomical changes set in.