I heard just the other day that some people were not happy with an article that ran in our July/August issue titled, “Do Lectures Deliver?” I heard that some thought the survey the article was based on explored the many educational delivery mechanisms and came up with live meetings as the winner. But that’s not the case. The survey we conducted was limited to only exploring live-meeting options because 1) We had to keep it short enough that the docs would actually fill it out; and 2) since the forms were disseminated at live meetings, participants obviously like that format enough to attend, and might be biased in their answers against other types of educational activities as a result. I’m sorry that I didn’t make that clear at the outset.

I also apologise if my attempt at being provocative at the beginning of the article, i.e., “Do they know something we don’t?” when it comes to lectures motivating physicians to change behavior, was misleading. The answer to that question later in the article was not about knowledge, but perception, and those are two different things. A better question would have been, “How do their perceptions mesh with what we know?”

This post courtesy of Anne Taylor-Vaisey:

Here is an article about an international collaboration from the October 2004 issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing:

Leppa, Carol J. & Terry, Louise M. Reflective practice in nursing ethics education: international collaboration. Journal of Advanced Nursing 2004 48 (2), 195-202.

Background. The Internet provides the opportunity for international comparative study and collaboration when learning about ethics in clinical nursing practice.

This post courtesy of Anne Taylor-Vaisey:

This article is from the September issue of Evaluation & the Health Professions. Sage Publications is offering its publications for free until the end of October.

Here is a link to the table of contents for this issue:

Howley LD. Performance assessment in medical education: where we’ve been and where we’re going. Eval Health Prof 2004 Sep;27(3):285-303.

Abstract: The assessment of clinical competence is becoming increasingly complex, patient centered, and student driven. Traditionally, clinical evaluation methods consisted primarily of faculty observations, oral examinations, and multiple-choice tests. Increased faculty work load, discontent with traditional methods of clinical skill assessment, and developments in the fields of psychology and education have led to the formation of new modalities, namely performance assessments.

This post courtesy of Anne Taylor-Vaisey:

Medical Education October 2004;38(10)

The above issue is now available online from Blackwell Synergy. The table of contents for this issue is listed below. Click here for links to the abstracts and full text.

1019 in this issue

W. Gifford Jones, MD, once again renewed the idea that it s those out-of-session exchanges that count the most:

I recently attended a meeting of head and neck surgeons to hear about new treatments for oral cancers. But over the 29 years of writing this column and attending medical meetings, I ve discovered one important fact. Often the most vital information is learned over a scotch- and-soda following the scientific discussions.



It s not that we sit around in the evening and get drunk. Rather, it s that time of day when everyone relaxes and is more forthright in discussing medical matters. And rambling conversation often centers on experiences that should have been reported in the formal meetings.

So why aren t these things in the case, a scarcity of head and neck surgeons being reported on in the formal meetings? I think it might be one of those cases of “people don t know what they don t know,” so these topics tend to come up by chance, not in the needs analysis. And in a recent survey we did, the docs said informal discussion with colleagues is one of their least preferred learning modes. I have no solution for this do you?

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