Pathology podcasts: a growing educational tool

Undergraduate medical student perspectives on the role of autopsy in medical education

University of Missouri—Kansas City School of Medicine

With the continuous advancement of global medical technology and the increasing demand for humanized medical services, the cultivation of medical students' comprehensive quality has become a core goal of medical education. The purpose of this study is to explore the core role and practical value of medical humanities education in the cultivation of medical students' comprehensive quality, and to provide theoretical support and practical reference for the reform of global medical education. This study adopted a mixed research method combining systematic literature review and cross-sectional survey. First, a comprehensive search was conducted in databases such as PubMed, Web of Science, and CNKI to sort out and analyze domestic and foreign literatures on medical humanities education and medical students' comprehensive quality cultivation in the past 10 years; then, a questionnaire survey was carried out among 500 medical students from 10 medical colleges and universities in different countries to investigate their cognitive level of medical humanities, the current situation of receiving humanities education, and the impact of humanities education on their professional literacy, communication ability and ethical judgment. The results showed that medical humanities education has a significant positive correlation with the improvement of medical students' comprehensive quality, which can effectively enhance their empathy ability, sense of professional responsibility, ethical decision-making ability and doctor-patient communication skills; however, there are problems such as inadequate integration of humanities education into professional training, single teaching mode and uneven teaching quality in medical education in many countries. The conclusion points out that medical humanities education is an indispensable part of medical students' comprehensive quality cultivation, and it is necessary to construct a diversified and integrated medical humanities education system integrating curriculum setting, practical teaching and cultural edification to promote the all-round development of medical students and meet the needs of modern medical practice.

Education: “The process or art of imparting knowledge, skill and judgment; Facts, skills and ideas that have been learnt, either formally or informally.” — Wikipedia 1 The term profession is applied to those persons who have specialized and technical skill or knowledge which they apply, for a fee, to certain tasks that ordinary and unqualified people cannot ordinarily undertake. The term derives from the Latin: “to swear (an oath) …” . — Wikipedia 2 Let’s consider how we as cardiovascular medicine specialists spend our days in the care of people with cardiovascular disease. In the office or making rounds in the hospital, we prescribe drugs and order diagnostic tests; in the noninvasive laboratory, we obtain and interpret images of the heart; in the electrophysiology and cardiac catheterization laboratories, we program and implant devices in patients. When antithrombotic and fibrinolytic drugs are administered, and primary percutaneous coronary intervention is done using balloon catheters and intracoronary stents, lives are saved among patients with acute myocardial infarction. Response by Avorn and Choudhry see p 2221 The mortality risk from heart failure decreases and quality of life increases from the proper and appropriate use of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and β-blockers. Lipid lowering through the use of statin drugs saves lives and reduces serious cardiovascular complications such as myocardial infarction and stroke when properly prescribed to patients with a variety of manifestations of atherosclerotic vascular diseases. According to a recent publication by Ford and colleagues,3 deaths due to coronary heart disease in the United States declined substantially from 1980 to 2000, resulting in >340 000 fewer deaths in 2000. The authors attributed approximately half of this decline to changes in cardiac risk factors and half to the application of evidence-based therapies. An underlying theme in all of this is that the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and …

In Memoriam: Herbert L. Fred, MD (1929–2018)

Many who participate in conferences on medical education quite often face difficulty in understanding new educational terms and concepts introduced by speakers. Looking for definitions or descriptions is often not an easy task. Furthermore, when searching various dictionaries and publications, one learns that the definitions of many terms, if they do in fact exist, are often equivocal or unrelated to medical education. There is universal agreement on the importance of common understanding of various terms and methods, especially in view of rapidly growing globalization of medical education and the use of different languages for communication. In addition, the concept of continuous medical education that links undergraduate with postgraduate and continuing education (CME) demands that the terms used in different stages and by different people have the same meaning for all partners in the educational process. Starting in March 2002 (Vol. 24, No. 2) Medical Teacher has been serializing the Glossary of Medical Education Terms (see page 450 of this issue). The Glossary was prepared with the intention of assisting in communication among medical educators. The developed formulations of educational definitions, terms and methods derive from different sources such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, glossaries, articles and the Internet. An attempt has been made to present as clearly as possible the most broadly accepted views. The greatest difficulty is that there are often quite significant differences in definitions of the same or similar concepts and terms. Unfortunately, this is often the case in multi-professional fields such as medical education. Over the past few decades, many changes in medical education, in particular at the undergraduate level, have been introduced. Increasingly innovative curricula, methods and educational tools have been developed through the cooperation of medical professionals with pedagogues, sociologists, psychologists, information specialists and those in many other related professions. However, they have helped bring to medical education various concepts, definitions and vocabularies not known before to medical professionals. In many cases, this has quite unintentionally caused confusion, controversy and misunderstanding, as the vocabulary used by disciplines outside medicine often has a different focus and meaning. The dictionary format has been chosen for the Glossary in order to provide answers to specific questions, as well as short descriptions to give a wider understanding of each term or method. All of the terms discussed are presented in relation to their relevance for medical education. As population health and information management are becoming a more and more broadly integral part of undergraduate medical education, the Glossary includes also the most important terms from these areas as well as terms used in the administration and management of health systems. In addition, the Glossary includes short descriptions of some important associations and organizations involved in medical education. In all branches of science and the arts, terms are often used with meanings specific to subject and context. As the number of new concepts is growing, the meaning of some definitions may therefore not be clear to all readers, especially if they are developed in different languages. Therefore it was not intended to provide absolute conclusive definitions in all cases. Some of the entries may prove to be controversial when read by medical educators from different professional backgrounds. The Glossary aims to stimulate discussion in a field that is full of debate and different ideas. Finally, the author would like to encourage and welcome any criticism, corrections, additions and proposals for change in the formulation of different terms, to be considered for the next edition of the Glossary. It is hoped that this publication will enable better understanding and communication between educators. It is hoped, also, that this will help to put current discussions about medical education in context.

Medical media resources exist in a variety of analog and digital formats. Collections are generally organized and stored by their owners, each of whom utilizes their own method of cataloging and retrieval. As faculty retire, move on, or pass away, institutions risk losing the expertise that enhances the value media. The Stanford MediaServer has previously been deployed to catalog, organize, and centralize management of such media collections via the World Wide Web. Educational tools have been developed on top of existing MediaServer infrastructure to address a range of pedagogical models, and to promote widespread adoption within the Stanford Medical School curriculum and departments. These tools include Slide Show, Export to PowerPoint, Teaching File, and e-Books. With the exception of e-Books, these tools use web-based wizards to lead the user through the steps for creating each component.Slide Shows consist of an ordered set of images and provide the underpinning data structures for PowerPoint and Teaching File creation. Slide Shows can be assembled from any accessible media in the MediaServer and shared with other users of the system.Export to PowerPoint is a utility function to address the widespread use of PowerPoint in medical education and multimedia presentation. It allows Slide Shows to be converted to PowerPoint and downloaded to the client system for offline use, easing the process of assembling media and creating a PowerPoint document. This function leverages XML Web Services and the SOAP protocol to achieve the desired outputs.Teaching Files are used to illustrate a particular educational topic, and consist of a multi-page interface. Each page contains media and annotations specific to the educational topic at hand. Annotations are stored with the Teaching File and not with the collated media. Individual pages are assembled by choosing existing Slide Shows and further annotating the media.E-Books are web-based books built on a particular design template provided by the MediaServer. Authors can integrate media from the MediaServer into these e-Books, which are assembled through the use of 3rd party tools such as Macromedia Dreamweaver.MediaServer resources were deployed in a gross anatomy course through the use of these tools and integration with third party applications, including a three-dimensional stereo viewing system. This pilot project was well received by the course participants and evaluation of usage data is ongoing.These educational media tools must be further evaluated for their teaching efficacy. These tools will be evaluated with volunteer faculty contributing media and creating Slide Shows, PowerPoint documents, Teaching Files, and e-Books. These educational modules will then be used for medical school classes. Feedback will be integrated into further development of new educational tools, providing new views into the large Stanford MediaServer dataset.Access rights management and security is paramount for the protection of digital media. The existing MediaServer security system will be enhanced to address privacy concerns, while providing faculty the flexibility to appropriately create and share educational units with their students and colleagues. Standard APIs will also be created to allow third-party developers to access the media in the MediaServer and deliver it through their own web-based applications.This work was partially funded by gifts from the Yamazaki-Yang Family Foundation, the Siminoff Family Foundation, Sun Microsystems, and Silicon Graphics.

Simulation technologies in the practical training of medical professionals are the most important tool of modern medical education. A review of the literature on the use of simulation training in the field of medical education is presented, articles on simulation training at the specialist level and continuing postgraduate medical education are analyzed. Research has shown that training using simulation technologies leads to an improvement in the quality of training for future doctors. With the opening of simulation centers and the introduction of certification using simulation technologies at medical universities across the country, simulation training is becoming basic in the structure of medical education. Due to the expansion of opportunities, the prospects for the use of simulation technologies are significantly expanding, and there is a need to develop new methods to improve the effectiveness of specialist training.

BackgroundLarge language models (LLMs) have demonstrated significant potential in diverse domains, including medicine. Nonetheless, there is a scarcity of studies examining their performance in medical examinations, especially those conducted in languages other than English, and in direct comparison with medical students. Analyzing the performance of LLMs in state medical examinations can provide insights into their capabilities and limitations and evaluate their potential role in medical education and examination preparation. ObjectiveThis study aimed to assess and compare the performance of 3 LLMs, GPT-4, Bing, and GPT-3.5-Turbo, in the German Medical State Examinations of 2022 and to evaluate their performance relative to that of medical students. MethodsThe LLMs were assessed on a total of 630 questions from the spring and fall German Medical State Examinations of 2022. The performance was evaluated with and without media-related questions. Statistical analyses included 1-way ANOVA and independent samples t tests for pairwise comparisons. The relative strength of the LLMs in comparison with that of the students was also evaluated. ResultsGPT-4 achieved the highest overall performance, correctly answering 88.1% of questions, closely followed by Bing (86.0%) and GPT-3.5-Turbo (65.7%). The students had an average correct answer rate of 74.6%. Both GPT-4 and Bing significantly outperformed the students in both examinations. When media questions were excluded, Bing achieved the highest performance of 90.7%, closely followed by GPT-4 (90.4%), while GPT-3.5-Turbo lagged (68.2%). There was a significant decline in the performance of GPT-4 and Bing in the fall 2022 examination, which was attributed to a higher proportion of media-related questions and a potential increase in question difficulty. ConclusionsLLMs, particularly GPT-4 and Bing, demonstrate potential as valuable tools in medical education and for pretesting examination questions. Their high performance, even relative to that of medical students, indicates promising avenues for further development and integration into the educational and clinical landscape.

I want to commend Griffin et al. for their outstanding article on geriatric oral health.1 As they pointed out, oral disease in this population is a major health issue with important consequences. Strategies for improving outcomes must be multifactorial. I was struck by the importance of their statement suggesting that part of the solution is for “primary care providers and geriatricians [to] be educated on common oral conditions, risk factors, and healthy behaviors along with the medical, functional, emotional, and social consequences of poor oral health.” 1(p416) While Griffin et al. did not cite the recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports,2,3 their recommendation for improved medical education with regards to oral health echoes the IOM’s call to action. Fortunately, there are ripples of hope within the medical education realm with regards to geriatric oral health. Firstly, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has recently issued a Call for Proposals to create new materials or promote existing resources for more than 50 oral health topics that span the life cycle.4 These peer-reviewed educational materials will be available within the next six months on their curricular repository (http://www.mededportal.org). Secondly, the creators of the national oral health curriculum Smiles for Life recently added a geriatric oral health module to their seven other oral health educational modules.5 This educational tool can be downloaded as a Power Point presentation with speaker notes for use in any educational setting or accessed as an online interactive course to be completed within 40 minutes. Each course comes complete with cases and questions to test comprehension. The online course is approved for continuing education credits for physicians, nurses, and physician assistants. Lastly, Smiles for Life lead to a larger project funded by the Dentaquest Foundation, the National Interprofesional Initiative on Oral Health.6 This group comprises a diverse group of medical and dental professionals and educators working to promote oral health education across the entire medical and nursing spectrum including undergraduate schools, residencies, and practicing professionals. They are committed to oral health education that covers every key topic including those groups that are often overlooked, such as geriatrics. These efforts are in line with the proposed roles for public health players that Griffin et al. mentioned. This should create a new generation of health care providers who realize that good oral health is a part of good geriatric overall health and vice versa.

Instructional animations play a prominent role in medical education, but the degree to which these teaching tools follow empirically established learning principles, such as those outlined in the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (CTML), is unknown. These principles provide guidelines for designing animations in a way that promotes optimal cognitive processing and facilitates learning, but the application of these learning principles in current animations has not yet been investigated. A large-scale review of existing educational tools in the context of this theoretical framework is necessary to examine if and how instructional medical animations adhere to these principles and where improvements can be made. We conducted a comprehensive review of instructional animations in the health sciences domain and examined whether these animations met the three main goals of CTML: managing essential processing; minimising extraneous processing, and facilitating generative processing. We also identified areas for pedagogical improvement. Through Google keyword searches, we identified 4455 medical animations for review. After the application of exclusion criteria, 860 animations from 20 developers were retained. We randomly sampled and reviewed 50% of the identified animations. Many animations did not follow the recommended multimedia learning principles, particularly those that support the management of essential processing. We also noted an excess of extraneous visual and auditory elements and few opportunities for learner interactivity. Many unrealised opportunities exist for improving the efficacy of animations as learning tools in medical education; instructors can look to effective examples to select or design animations that incorporate the established principles of CTML.

Learning is a complex construct that involves several factors, mainly the interaction between teachers and students in the process of teaching and learning. Understanding how students learn and which factors influence academic performance is essential information for lesson planning and evaluation, in addition to allowing a better use of students’ learning potential and outcomes. The ability to constructively modify one’s behavior depends on how well we combine our experiences, reflections, conceptualizations, and planning to make improvements. This seems particularly relevant in medical education, where students are expected to retain, recall, and apply vast amounts of information assimilated throughout their training period. Over the years, there has being a gradual shift in medical education from a passive learning approach to an active learning approach. To support the learning environment, educators need to be aware of the different learning styles of their students to effectively tailor instructional strategies and methods to cater to students’ learning needs. However, the space for reflection on the process of teaching is still incipient in higher-education institutions in Brazil. The present article proposes a critical review of the importance of identifying students’ learning styles in undergraduate medical education. Different models exist for assessing learning styles. Different styles can coexist in equilibrium (multimodal style) or predominate (unimodal style) in the same individual. Assessing students’ learning styles can be a useful tool in education, once it is possible to analyze with what kind of learning students can better develop themselves, improving their knowledge and influencing positively in the process of learning. Over the last century, medical education experienced challenges to improve the learning process and curricular reform. Also, this has resulted in crucial changes in the field of medical education, with a shift from a teacher centered and subject based teaching to the use of interactive, problem based, student centered learning.

Open educational resources (OERs) are becoming increasingly common as a tool in education, particularly in medical and biomedical education. However, three key barriers have been identified to their use: 1) lack of awareness of OERs, 2) lack of motivation to use OERs, and 3) lack of training in the use of OERs. Here, we explore these three barriers with teachers of medical and biomedical science to establish how best to enhance the use of OERs to improve pedagogical outcomes. An online survey was completed by 209 educators, many of whom (68.4%) reported using OERs in their teaching and almost all (99.5%) showing awareness of at least one OER. The results suggest that key problems that prevent educators from adopting OERs in their teaching include suitability for particular classes, time, and copyright. Most (81.8%) educators were somewhat, very, or extremely comfortable with OERs so there is no innate motivational barrier to adoption. A lack of training was reported by 13.9% of respondents, and 40% of respondents stated that there was little or no support from their institutions. OER users were no more comfortable with technology or better supported by departments but tended to be aware of a greater number of sources of OERs. Our study illustrates key opportunities for the expansion of OER use in physiology and medical teaching: increased breadth of awareness, increased institutional support (including time, training, and copyright support), and greater sharing of diverse OERs to suit the range of teaching challenges faced by staff in different subdisciplines.

Medical education has evolved to become a discipline in its own right. With demands on medical faculties to be socially responsible and accountable, there is now increasing pressure for the professionalisation of teaching practice. Developing a cadre of professional and competent teachers, educators, researchers and leaders for their new roles and responsibilities in medical education requires faculty development. Faculty development is, however, not an easy task. It requires supportive institutional leadership, appropriate resource allocation and recognition for teaching excellence.This guide is designed to assist those charged with preparing faculty for their many new roles in teaching and education in both medical and allied health science education. It provides a historical perspective of faculty development and draws on the medical, health science and higher education literature to provide a number of frameworks that may be useful for designing tailored faculty development programmes. These frameworks can be used by faculty developers to systematically plan, implement and evaluate their staff development programmes.This guide concludes with some of the major trends and driving forces in medical education that we believe will shape future faculty development.

Pediatric Hospitalists in Medical Education: Current Roles and Future Directions