Effects of an Educational Film About Body Donors on Students' Empathy and Anxiety Levels in Gross Anatomy

While most German anatomy institutes provide only limited information about body donors and their lives, students have expressed a desire to learn more about these individuals, especially about their motivations to donate their bodies for the sake of medical education. In order to gratify this wish, as well as to further humanize body donors, an educational film was compiled, and a study designed to capture the film's effects on medical students. This is the first study using standardized, validated psychological tools to evaluate the impact of an educational film about body donors on students’ empathy and psychological stress levels. The study followed a longitudinal, controlled, and cluster randomized design, including 77 (48 females/29 males) participants who watched the video either before, midway, or after the dissection course. Questionnaires were completed at four points in time applying the Jefferson Scale for Empathy (JSPE-S) and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) to measure empathy. Psychological stress levels were recorded by the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). Overall, students recommended the film to be shown to all students (median 6.0; maximum on the six-point Likert scale). Viewing the film revealed no significant changes between study groups or over time in JSPE-S sum scores. All groups demonstrated a significant reduction of BSI values before the dissection course actually started and increased values during the course, but both developments appeared not to be associated with the intervention. Overall, the educational film did not correlate with any negative effects on students’ empathy and psychological stress levels, and it was strongly approved of by students, as it provided more humanizing personal information about body donors without violating their anonymity.     

Everyday Scientific Imagination

Science & Education - Imagination is necessary for scientific practice, yet there are no in vivo sociological studies on the ways that imagination is taught, thought of, or...     

Success in Consulting

Do you regularly reflect on the value you bring to your client? The act of reflection is something experienced consultants, both internal and external, consistently do in their practice. This article examines the ways in which Certified Performance Technologists (CPTs) define and recognize the success of their efforts, but most importantly, how they learn from engagements that do not always end with the desired outcome. You will hear from CPTs across several industries in their own words about what strategies they have employed to continue to improve their skill sets.     

IQ = 69 = mildly retarded?: Factors influencing multidisciplinary team recommendations on children with FSIQs between 63 and 75

Discriminant analysis was used to examine factors that influenced the educational diagnoses of a sample of 80 referred students in grades 1 to 6. All students had WISCR Full Scale IQs between 63 and 75, which includes the range of scores that is ±2 SEm around the cutoff value of 69 used by the student's school district to define the upper limit of the mildly retarded classification. The results indicate that the recommendations made by the multidisciplinary teams were associated primarily with the level of the Full Scale IQ.     

Factor analysis of the abbreviated conners teacher rating scale: Implications for the assessment of hyperactivity

A factor analysis of the abbreviated Conners Teacher Rating Scale (CTRS) was completed using a sample of 108 regular and special education students. Two factors accounted for 69.5% of the total response variance: Factor I consisted of items describing attention deficits and motor activity, and Factor II consisted of items describing excessive affective reactions. It is suggested that the abbreviated CTRS be interpreted with respect to its latent structure, rather than to one global score as has been common practice.