Docnotes

The 12 types of medical students

Discovered today on medlogs: This is very funny (and accurate too!)

What Residents Don't Know about Physician-Pharmaceutical Industry Interactions

Academic Medicine Online -- Abstracts: Watkins and Kimberly 79 (5): 432

Internal medicine residents and faculty reported low levels of knowledge about physician-pharmaceutical industry relationships. Some consensus about educational components existed, but optimal educational formats remain uncertain. A six-hour curriculum to address this complex, emotionally charged topic was developed, implemented, and evaluated.

This study confirms what is (for some) self-evident:  marketing works ... and unless you really THINK about the marketing ... the real agenda will be overlooked.  

Family Medicine Education

Jan Gottlieb, MPH - developed a set of resources that:

provide a helpful resource for faculty and staff of medical schools who are planning to, or are currently using service-learning to educate medical students and residents about

1. community-oriented primary care
2. Healthy People 2010 objectives
3. Cultural competence.   

The toolkit, which should be applicable to other fields and disciplines as well, is designed to help minimize some of the start-up time involved in developing service-learning programs.  It will also provide examples for tailoring service-learning to fit your timeframe. The toolkit was based on three of the COPC-service-learning programs developed by our Department of Family Medicine in collaboration with community partners, over the last eight years.

More on EBM

CRAP:  Clinicians for the Restoration of Autonomous Practice Writing Group:

Clinicians for the Restoration of Autonomous Practice (CRAP) has written this report and nailed it to the door of the BMJ. We have done this anonymously and under cover of darkness to protect ourselves from retaliation from grand inquisitors in the new religion of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM).

Take a look at the article.  Very well done.

Dean's Letters

It's the time of year that we need to write Dean's letters for the medical students.  These letters serve as a summary of the students' medical school careers -- and (we hope) help them get in to the residency of their choice. 

It's hard work to write these things .. carefully walking a line of being the student's advocate - while also being honest about students who have not performed so well as they could.  Three more to go.  I was hoping to finish tonight .. but it's not going to happen.

--

I enjoyed meeting everyone at Bloggercon - and I think that the "medlical weblogs" session was productive.  I've been thinking about a "work product" that we could creat that might summarize some of our discussion - perhaps a "guide to medical weblogging" that might help frame some of the issues that we discussed, and could help claify some of the common "do's and don'ts" of medical weblogging. 

Then again ... maybe not.  Should there be rules?  No .. but guidelines?  Perhaps.  HIPAA looms large, as do medical ethics.  In our enthusiasm to share OUR experiences, we're also share the experiences of our patients and colleagues.  Hmm ..