Observations were made of 108 pre-clinical medical students interviewing patients carefully selected by general practitioner instructors, under strict supervision in an audiovisual studio. Videotape replay, patient comments, and later group teaching were used to discover students with major defects in personal communication. (Author/LBH)

A postgraduate seminar on the psychological aspects of general practice was evaluated in which focus was on the developing doctor-patient relationship as revealed by the reporting doctor. Suggestions for improving such training sessions and their evaluation are offered. (LBH)

The way that residents in internal medicine allotted their time during patient management rounds was determined. House staff teams were observed for four days, and the time spent on all activities was recorded. The study suggests that medical educators should be concerned about the thoroughness of house staff work rounds. (Author/MLW)

Three chronically ill patients were trained to evaluate the performance of 31 second-year internal medicine house officers based upon: a checklist for the medical data elicited during the medical interview; the process of the interview; and the physical examination technique. (Author/MLW)

The effect of clinical experience on diagnosis formulation was assessed by studying physicians at different levels of training. To evaluate whether physicians' knowledge of being part of an experiment affected their formation and modification of diagnoses, physicians signed consent forms and were not informed when videotaping was done. (Author/MLW)

The effectiveness of multidisciplinary patient conferences was examined. The question of multidisciplinary conference productivity was addressed by examining the impact of these conferences on a team's formulation of patient therapy plans, problem lists, hospitalization goals, and discharge date. (Author/MLW)

Effective patient care requires effective communication. The creation of a "Patientspeak" dictionary is offered as a constructive exercise for facilitating communication between health care professionals and their patients and has been incorporated into the freshman psychiatry course. (Author/MLW)

This guide presents materials to improve understanding and communication between health care practitioners and patients or between teachers and learners. It contains descriptions of health education materials addressing issues of culture and low-literacy and has information written in languages other than English. It includes materials not found…

In an attempt to assure informed consent and basic patients' rights, and to instruct patient volunteers about the teaching-patient role and its importance to effective medical education, a nonphysician patient-advocate-interviewer (PAI) model was developed. The usefulness of the model is evaluated. (Author/MLW)

A survey of 222 obstetrics patients assisted by medical clerkship students from the University of Vermont and 78 who refused student participation found privacy the primary motivation for refusal and a desire to contribute to students' education a primary reason for accepting student participation. Patients frequently erroneously anticipated the…

The Association of American Medical Colleges' conference on the use of standardized patients in the teaching and evaluation of clinical medical skills is summarized, including perspectives on issues such as curriculum design, administrative concerns, faculty indifference or resistance, and logistical and financial feasibility. (MSE)

This lesson addresses the unique issues confronting child and adolescent psychiatrists in prescribing medication for children and adolescents. Issues of consent, off-label use of medications, safety, and efficacy are discussed, along with problems that may arise when treating high-risk populations. This lesson aims to encourage safe and ethical…

Cognitive therapy (CT) may have significant advantages over antidepressants in preventing depression relapses. Many CT patients experience sudden gains: large symptom improvement in 1 between-session interval. Past studies have associated CT sudden gains with in-session cognitive changes but not with life events. This study examined sudden gains…

There has been considerable debate as to whether structures in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) support both memory and perception, in particular whether the perirhinal cortex may be involved in the perceptual discrimination of complex objects with a large number of overlapping features. Similar experiments testing the discrimination of blended…

This paper investigates stress assignment in Dutch aphasic patients in non-word repetition, as well as in real-word and non-word reading. Performance on the non-word reading task was similar for the aphasic patients and the control group, as mainly regular stress was assigned to the targets. However, there were group differences on the real-word…