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Biomedical subjects

D L Elliot

Publications and source records attributed to D L Elliot.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Mediating mechanisms in a program to reduce intentions to use anabolic steroids and improve exercise self-efficacy and dietary behavior.

This study investigated the mediating mechanisms responsible for the effects of a program designed to reduce intentions to use anabolic steroids, improve nutrition, and increase strength training self-efficacy. Fifteen of 31 high school football teams (N = 1,506 players at baseline) in Oregon and Washington were assigned to receive the intervention. The multicomponent program addressed the social influences promoting ergogenic drug use and engaging students in healthy nutrition and strength training alternative behaviors. Although the results differed across the three dependent variables, the program appeared to work by changing team norms. Unlike prevention of other drugs, changes in knowledge and perceived severity were mediators of program effects in this study.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

The adolescents training and learning to avoid steroids program: preventing drug use and promoting health behaviors.

BACKGROUND: Use of alcohol and other illicit drugs by adolescent male athletes is a significant problem. Participation in sports may encourage use of drugs that enhance athletic performance, especially anabolic steroids (AS). Because, to our knowledge, no other intervention has successfully altered substance abuse by athletes, we developed and assessed the efficacy of a team-centered, sex-specific education program designed to reduce adolescent athletes' intentions to use and use of AS and alcohol and other illicit drugs. METHODS: We studied 31 high school football teams that comprised 3207 athletes in 3 successive annual cohorts (1994-1996). The intervention included interactive classroom and exercise training sessions given by peer educators and facilitated by coaches and strength trainers. Program content included discussion of sports nutrition, exercise alternatives to AS and sport supplements, and the effects of substance abuse in sports, drug refusal role-playing, and the creation of health promotion messages. Questionnaires assessing AS, the use of sport supplements and alcohol and other illicit drugs, and potential risk and protective factors were administered before and after the intervention (before and after the football season) and up to 1 year after the program. RESULTS: At season's end, intentions to use (P<.05) and actual AS use (P<.04) were significantly lower among students who participated in the study. Although AS reduction did not achieve significance at 1 year (P<.08), intentions to use AS remained lower (P = .02). Illicit drug use (marijuana, amphetamines, and narcotics) was reduced at 1 year, whether alcohol was included (P = .04) or excluded (P = .02) from the index. Other long-term effects included fewer students reporting drinking and driving (P = .004), less sport supplement use (P = .009), and improved nutrition behaviors (P<.02). CONCLUSIONS: Use of alcohol and other illicit drugs and associated harmful activities can be prevented with a sex-specific, team-centered education. School athletic teams provide an optimal environment in which to provide drug prevention and health promotion education.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

How do faculty evaluate students' case presentations?

BACKGROUND: Although the case presentation is a frequent activity, little is known about the attributes that faculty members use when assessing case presentation ability. PURPOSE: Define the dimensions used by faculty when assessing students' case presentation abilities. METHODS: Eleven internal medicine faculty members independently assessed the same 17 videotaped student case presentations. Raters used an evaluation form assembled with 4 descriptors of content and 6 attributes of communication style. For each evaluator, correlation analyses were used to examine associations among the individual descriptors and a student's overall evaluation. RESULTS: Despite efforts toward uniform scoring, faculty evaluators varied in their application of rating criteria. The majority of raters had significant (p < .01) correlation between 4 of the 10 dimensions and the overall score. These 4 were history of present illness and three communication skills: economy, fluency, and precision of language. CONCLUSIONS: Faculty members' assessment of case presentations is based on both the facts presented and communication style. These identified performance dimensions can facilitate teaching students to present cases and allow more informative feedback on their abilities.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1996

The Adolescents Training and Learning to Avoid Steroids (ATLAS) prevention program. Background and results of a model intervention.

OBJECTIVE: To develop and test a school-based intervention to prevent anabolic androgenic steroid use among high-risk adolescent athletes. DESIGN: Nonrandom controlled trial. SETTING: Two urban high schools. PARTICIPANTS: Fifty-six adolescent football players at the experimental school and 24 players at the control school. INTERVENTION: Eight weekly, 1-hour classroom sessions delivered by the coach and adolescent team leaders, and eight weight-room sessions delivered by research staff. The intervention addressed sports nutrition and strength training as alternatives to steroid use, drug refusal role play, and antisteroid media campaigns. OUTCOME MEASURES: A preintervention and postintervention questionnaire that assessed attitudes toward and intent to use steroids and other drugs; knowledge of drug effects; and diet, exercise, and related constructs. RESULTS: Compared with controls, experimental subjects were significantly less interested in trying steroids after the intervention, were less likely to want to use them even if their friends used them, were less likely to believe steroid use was a good idea, believed steroids were more dangerous, had better knowledge of alternatives to steroid use, had improved body image, increased their knowledge of diet supplements, and had less belief in these supplements as beneficial. CONCLUSIONS: Significant beneficial effects were found despite the sample size, suggesting that the effects of the intervention was large. This outcome trial demonstrates an effective anabolic androgenic steroid prevention program for adolescent athletes, and the potential of team-based interventions to enhance adolescents' health.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

Principles of clinical medicine: an interdisciplinary integrated 2-year longitudinal course.

In keeping with the Report of the Panel on the General Professional Education of the Physician (Association of American Medical Colleges 1984), Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) School of Medicine is in the midst of revising its curriculum. After a 4-year process, the Curriculum Committee mandated development of the Principles of Clinical Medicine course, a 2-year longitudinal course integrating input from both basic and clinical science departments. We describe the steps leading to the course's implementation, its administrative and organizational structure, the evaluation of student performance, teacher training, course curriculum, and the use of interdisciplinary teaching. This course embodies many of the changes called for in the AAMC Report and serves as a model for interdisciplinary education.

Clinical Medicine↗
PubMed1994

Health promotion and early disease detection among medical school faculty.

BACKGROUND: Medical school faculty members influence students' health promotion beliefs by their patient care activities and personal health habits. We characterized the medical school environment by defining faculty's health promotion and early disease detection attitudes and practices. The data disclose faculty needs and suggest a new paradigm to alter medical students' health promotion beliefs and care patterns. METHODS: An observational study of all academic faculty was conducted at a medical school using self-report survey data collected with a confidential questionnaire. The survey instrument assessed faculty demographics, 27 behaviors, and 23 beliefs concerning health promotion. RESULTS: Eighty-four percent of faculty (575 of 683) responded. Although agreement was moderate to good between lifestyle beliefs and personal behaviors, the concordance between personal adherence to and beliefs concerning the recommended physical examinations and laboratory tests was only fair (kappa 0.21 to 0.40). CONCLUSION: Faculty's health promotion and disease detection beliefs and behaviors were inconsistent. Observing this discrepancy may relate to students' establishment of attitudes and practices. Modifying faculty's personal behaviors and altering the medical school environment might enhance students' commitment toward preventive care.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Use of a group objective structured clinical examination with first-year medical students.

PURPOSE: To evaluate the implementation of a quarterly group objective structured clinical examination (GOSCE) to assess the patient-evaluation abilities of a medical school class. METHOD: The study subjects were 94 first-year students participating in the Principles of Clinical Medicine course at the Oregon Health Sciences University School of Medicine in 1992-93. To create the GOSCE, the authors modified the format of the quarterly objective structured clinical examination by making each standardized-patient station the site of an interaction between a standardized patient and a group of four or five students. The GOSCE's reliability, content and face validity, and expense were evaluated. Student feedback was obtained using a structured questionnaire. RESULTS: Performances varied both among the five stations of the GOSCE and among the 23 student groups: the mean percentage of items performed correctly per station was 83%, with a range of 73-97%. The reliability of the GOSCE's stations was low, with intraclass correlations during the three consecutive quarters of .29, .05, and .12. Despite no prior experience with this type of testing, the students' mean rating of the GOSCE's appropriateness was 3.8 (on a Likert scale of 1, poor, to 5, excellent), compared with 2.5 for the appropriateness of the written examination also used for quarterly assessment. The expense of the GOSCE was much less than the costs reported for the OSCE format. CONCLUSION: The use of the quarterly GOSCE favorably influenced the students, faculty, and curriculum. The GOSCE format made possible the assessment of a large number of students' abilities, without the time and expense needed to evaluate students individually.

Attitude↗
PubMed1994

Towards new measures of information retrieval evaluation.

All of the methods currently used to assess information retrieval (IR) systems have limitations in their ability to measure how well users are able to acquire information. We utilized a new approach to assessing information obtained, based on a short-answer test given to senior medical students. Students took the ten-question test and then searched one of two IR systems on the five questions for which they were least certain of their answer Our results showed that pre-searching scores on the test were low but that searching yielded a high proportion of answers with both systems. These methods are able to measure information obtained, and will be used in subsequent studies to assess differences among IR systems.

Evaluation Studies as Topic↗
PubMed1993

Attending rounds on in-patient units: differences between medical and non-medical services.

The objective of this cross-sectional observational study was to quantify communication patterns between teachers and trainees on in-patient attending ward rounds and assess trainees' perceptions of the effectiveness of teaching interactions. Sixty-nine in-patient ward rounds on medical and non-medical teaching services at a university hospital and its affiliated VA Medical Center were studied. Teaching rounds were observed and audiotaped, and trained raters coded verbal interchange for its location, speaker identity and topic of the exchange. One to three days following the teaching rounds, residents and students were interviewed and completed a questionnaire concerning recollections of the content of the session. Medical rounds lasted a mean of 90 minutes, while non-medical rounds averaged 38 minutes. Medical teams spent more time than non-medical teams on case presentations and discussions of diseases not directly related to patient care. Both groups averaged approximately 10 minutes directly interacting with patients, and equal times were spent speaking by the teacher and trainees. The role of postgraduate year 1 residents and medical students primarily was to recite details of patients' clinical condition. Twenty-nine per cent of trainees were unable to recall a specific teaching point from rounds when interviewed 1-3 days later. Duration and content of in-patient rounds differed on medical and non-medical services. For both, discourse tended to be hierarchical, with those at different training levels adhering to specific roles. Bedside patient interactions were limited. The content recalled by students and house staff suggests that new, more effective educational paradigms are needed.

Clinical Competence↗
PubMed1991

Exercise training reduces intraocular pressure among subjects suspected of having glaucoma.

The effect of exercise conditioning on elevated intraocular pressure has not been previously described among sedentary individuals. We prospectively observed intraocular pressure for nine sedentary subjects suspected of having glaucoma before and after 3 months of aerobic exercise training. Mean (+/- SEM) aerobic capacity, as assessed by maximal oxygen uptake, increased 6.3 +/- 1.6 mL.kg-1.min-1 (30%) (P less than .02). Mean intraocular pressure decreased 4.6 +/- 0.4 mmHg (20%) (P less than .001) at the end of the conditioning period. With cessation of exercise and subsequent detraining, intraocular pressure returned to elevated preconditioning levels by 3 weeks. Regular aerobic exercise is associated with a reduction in elevated intraocular pressure and may represent an effective nonpharmacologic intervention for patients suspected of having glaucoma.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Preceptors for an introduction to clinical medicine course: needs of volunteer and full-time faculty.

Recruiting clinicians to teach bedside skills is often a challenge for Introduction to Clinical Medicine (ICM) course co-ordinations. Little data is available concerning what motivates a faculty to participate in these programmes. Better understanding of these factors might allow enhanced faculty involvement. We surveyed full-time and volunteer faculty as to what forces promote and hinder participation as preceptors for an ICM course. Results documented that both faculty groups found student interactions and teacher fulfillment their major reward, with little perceived academic or patient recognition. Personal time limitations was the greatest deterrent to participation. Assessing faculty needs has allowed focused course changes and new activities to facilitate involvement.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed1991

Management of suspected iron deficiency: a cost-effectiveness model.

Iron deficiency is frequent among physically active women. Several diagnostic and therapeutic strategies have been advocated. We determined how women's preferences for care varied with their risk of iron deficiency and/or anemia. The women's strength of feelings (utilities) and management costs were used to assess: 1) no evaluation or therapy; treatment based on a 2) complete blood count (CBC) or 3) ferritin level; and 4) empiric iron therapy. The analysis was applied to groups with differing iron deficiency prevalence. Women (N = 22) were adverse to the risk of both anemia and iron deficiency without anemia, and their preferences did not correlate with age, running mileage, years of running, or vitamin supplement use. Because of women's desire to avoid undiagnosed deficiency, the benefits of no evaluation, complete blood count assessment, and, to a less extent, serum ferritin decreased as the prevalence of iron deficiency increased. Ferritin level was more effective per cost than a CBC. However, empiric therapy had the highest effectiveness per cost. These results suggest a strategy that combines both patient concerns and the clinical suspicion of disease in choosing management for physically active women at risk for iron deficiency.

Adult↗