Surgeons as medical school educators: an untapped resource

Despite extensive experience teaching residents, surgeons are an untapped resource for educating medical students. We hypothesized that by involving surgeons as teachers earlier in the medical school curriculum, medical students' interest in surgery will increase and their opinions of surgeons will improve. Five programs designed to involve surgeons as educators in the medical school curriculum were implemented. The first program, started in 2008, introduced surgical faculty into the first-year medical student anatomy dissection laboratories. Other programs initiated in 2008 included: Surgical Clinical Correlates in Anatomy, which involved faculty teaching through cadaver surgery; Clinical Pathologic Conferences in Anatomy, a surgeon-led conference based on clinical cases; and a women's faculty-student mentorship program. Table Rounds, a surgeon-led anatomy review that used clinical scenarios to quiz students was begun in 2009. All five programs were successfully integrated into the medical school curriculum. While student opinion of surgeons as educators improved, there were no significant changes in student interest in surgery as a career nor change in performance on written examinations over the Anatomy content covered by the surgeons. Surgical faculty and trainees can be integrated into the medical school curriculum. Involving surgeons as educators earlier in the medical school curriculum may have longer term effects than could be observed in this study. At a minimum, the experience improved student opinion of surgeons as educators.     

The impact of different types of physical activity on total and regional bone mineral density in young Brazilian athletes

Bone turnover is affected by exercise throughout the lifespan, especially during childhood and adolescence. The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of different sports on total and regional bone mineral density in male Brazilian adolescent athletes. Forty-six adolescents aged 10-18 years participated in the study: 12 swimmers, 10 tennis players, 10 soccer players, and 14 sedentary individuals. The athletes had engaged in physical activities for more than 10 h per week in the previous 6 months. Bone mineral density of the lumbar spine (L1-L4), left proximal femur region, and whole body was evaluated by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Results showed higher mean values in the proximal femur region of tennis and soccer players (1.02 ± 0.18; 0.96 ± 0.16, respectively) than swimmers and controls (0.91 ± 0.14 and 0.87 ± 0.06, respectively) (P < 0.05). In relation to the impact of sporting activities based on bone age determination, we observed significant differences in bone mineral density at all evaluated sites at the end of puberty (16-18 years) compared with 10-12 years, with increases of 78% in the lumbar spine, 47% in the proximal femur, and 38% in the whole body.     

Criminal Justice Education: Are We Missing One-third of the Crime Triangle?

Theoretical explanations, systemic response, and policy work on offenders and specific crime types are the backbone of criminal justice curricula in the United States. However, a similar breadth and depth of education on crime victims appear to be lacking in traditional criminal justice curricula, despite voluminous research on victims of crime. In this exploratory study, the authors conducted a content analysis of 679 programs from the Academy of Criminal Justice (ACJS) website directory. Departmental and course-level variables were included in the analysis. Results indicate that while more than half of the programs have faculty with expressed interests in victimization, only 11% of programs studied required coursework on crime victims and/or victimization. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Measuring Student Attitude and Knowledge in Technology-Rich Biology Classrooms

The use of technology in schools is now ubiquitous, but the effectiveness on the learning environment has mixed results. This paper describes the development and validation of an instrument to measure students’ attitudes toward and knowledge of technology with the aim of investigating any differences based on gender after a course where the science department made use of technology as an integral part of teaching biology. In this study, conducted in one school in the state of New York, in the United States of America, the Students’ Attitudes Toward and Knowledge of Technology Questionnaire was administered to nearly 700 high school science students. A principal component and principal factor analysis resulted in new scales from the validation of the instrument that demonstrated high reliabilities. There were statistically significant gender differences in all the scales of the questionnaire in favor of males.     

Outcomes of an Institutional Quality and Safety Residency Program Initiative

Although there are challenges in delivering a quality improvement initiative at academic medical centers, the potential benefits to resident physicians‐in‐training, hospitals, and patients are significant. This article describes the effects of an institution‐wide effort. Resident physicians‐in‐training from four medical specialty programs partnered with hospital staff while working on team quality‐improvement projects. We tracked clinical outcomes and used validated assessments. The results showed improvements in learning and organizational culture.     

Adult Role Models: Feasibility,Acceptability, and Initial Outcomes for Sex Education

The authors present the feasibility and acceptability of a parent sexuality education program led by peer educators in community settings. They also report the results of an outcome evaluation with 71 parents who were randomized to the intervention or a control group and surveyed one month prior to and six months after the four-week intervention. The program was highly feasible and acceptable to participants, and the curriculum was implemented with a high level of fidelity and facilitator quality. Pilot data show promising outcomes for increasing parental knowledge, communication, and monitoring of their adolescent children.     

Effects of Headings on Text Summarization

A summarization task was used to study whether headings influence readers' representations of the topic structure of a text. College students (Experiments 1-3) and sixth- and eighth-graders (Experiment 3) summarized a multiple topic text that (a) included headings introducing every new subtopic, (b) included headings introducing half of the new subtopics, or (c) included no headings. In all experiments, topics were more likely to be included in a summary if they were signaled than if they were not signaled. This effect was magnified when the text was only half signaled: Signaled topics were more likely to appear in a summary if only half the text topics were signaled than if all of the topics were signaled; however, unsignaled topics were less likely to appear in a summary if half of the text topics were signaled than if none of the text topics were signaled. The findings demonstrate that readers rely heavily on headings in a task that emphasizes attention to a text's topic structure. It is suggested that previously observed signaling effects on text recall are mediated by effects on how readers represent a text's topic structure. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.     

Serials management: integration and enhancement through reorganization

It is broadly acknowledged that effective serials management supports and requires a close link between the staff in technical and public services. More recently, new technological opportunities combined with changes in library organization and administration have greatly facilitated this linkage. The nature and structure of a library’s organization can aid in and benefit from this connectedness. Departments in the University of Louisville’s public and technical services areas began a cooperative effort to maintain serials records in the online catalog in the early 1990s. With reorganization in the late 1990s, a new team structure emerged which further facilitated this effort. In return, this cooperation and the tools that it has created support the teams in a new user-centered approach to serials management.