The Unintentional Effects on Body Donation Programs of a Competency-Based Curriculum in Postgraduate Medical Education

As medical programs place increasing importance on competency-based training and surgical simulations for residents, anatomy laboratories, and body donation programs find themselves in a position of adapting to changing demands. To better assess the demand for “life-like” cadaveric specimens and evaluate the possible impacts that competency-based medical education could have upon the body donation program of McGill University, Canada, the authors tracked, over the course of the last 10 years, the number of soft-embalmed specimens, along with the number of teaching sessions and the residents enrolled in competency-based programs that are using cadaveric material. The results reveal that the number of soft-embalmed specimens used within residency training increased from 5 in 2009 to 35 in 2019, representing an increase from 6% of bodies to 36.5% of the total number of body donors embalmed in this institution. Correspondingly, the number of annual teaching sessions for residents increased from 19 in 2012 to 116 in 2019. These increases in teaching are correlated with increasing number of residents enrolled in competency-based programs over the last 3 years (Pearson r ranging from 0.9705 to 0.9903, and R² ranging from 0.9418 to 0.9808). Those results suggest that the new skill-centered curricula which require residents to perform specific tasks within realistic settings, exhibit a growing demand for “life-like” cadaveric specimens. Institutions’ body donation programs must, therefore, adapt to those greater need for cadaveric specimens, which presents many challenges, ranging from the logistical to the ethical.     

Analyzing Food Science Research for Publishing Characteristics as a Model for Understanding the Needs of Researchers

Abstract

This paper provides a methodology to study the characteristics of the research output from a university department. The faculty publications and their cited references over a 10-year period were used as the basis for this study to identify their publishing patterns and the types of material they are publishing; a core set of journals and other resources they are publishing in and citing over this period; the characteristics of the journals in which they publish and cite; the degree of openness of their publications and their citation advantage; and the age of resources that are referenced.     

Recording the war effort: immigrant communities in Latin America and the memory of the Great War

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to analyse the initiatives undertaken by some immigrant communities residing in Latin America to record their mobilisation around the First World War. After the armistice, European communities in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and other countries gathered detailed information about their activities during the conflict, published as profusely illustrated books of remembrance, offered to their governments as proof of their loyalty. The article intends to establish the peculiar nature of these publications as records of the war effort, and analyse the agents and processes of their elaboration, and their role as commemorative but also as archival documents.     

Effects of Manipulative Instruction on Solving Area and Perimeter Problems by Students with Learning Disabilities

Abstract. A multiple baseline design was employed to test the effect of manipulative instruction on the perimeter and area problem‐solving performance of middle and high school students who had been diagnosed with LD in the area of mathematics. Modeling, prompting/guided practice, and independent practice in conjunction with manipulative training were employed to teach both perimeter and area problem‐solving skills. Analysis of data revealed that the students rapidly acquired the problem‐solving‐skills, maintained these skills over a two‐month period, and transferred these skills to a paper and pencil problem‐solving format. This research extends previous findings by revealing that use of concrete manipulatives promotes the long‐term maintenance of skills.