Biomedical subjects
Gary Dunnington
Publications and source records attributed to Gary Dunnington.
Who are the surgery clerkship directors and what are their educational needs?
BACKGROUND: The surgery clerkship director is a key individual in the surgery department's educational mission and yet there has been no prior effort to describe this group or identify their learning needs. The purpose of this study was to develop a demographic profile and an educational needs assessment for surgery clerkship directors. METHODS: A survey instrument was designed based on existing literature and distributed to surgery clerkship directors in the United States and Canada. RESULTS: Surveys were returned from 108 subjects (77%). The majority of clerkship directors strongly agree that directing is a positive experience but express concern that the job demands may impede their professional careers. The perceived educational needs identified related primarily to the development and management of the student education curriculum. CONCLUSIONS: Surgery clerkship directors are experienced academic surgeons who report high levels of satisfaction. They identify a number of important educational needs of the position and express concern about the requirements of the position on their academic careers.
Medical student contact with patients on a surgery clerkship: is there a chance to learn?
BACKGROUND: Earlier studies of medical students on nonsurgical rotations have shown that clinical clerks usually first interact with their patients late in the clinical course. This would seem disadvantageous to the student's learning because they would have less opportunity to generate diagnoses or a management plan. STUDY DESIGN: A questionnaire designed to assess the nature of medical student-patient interactions in all potential clinical sites was administered to third year medical students during their surgical clerkship. Students received questionnaires each day to evaluate their clinical experiences from the previous day. RESULTS: The results from 311 student-patient encounters were collected and analyzed by clinical site as follows: outpatient clinics, outpatient surgery, inpatient surgery, day of surgery admission, inpatient consults, or emergency room consults. Students reported significantly more opportunities to elicit chief complaint, generate potential diagnosis, develop or suggest a management plan, and perform the initial examination when in the clinic setting. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, students were given relatively few opportunities to be the first to interact with any patient in any setting. They infrequently had an opportunity to independently generate a hypothesis or generate a management plan. Currently, the clinic offers the best opportunity for the student to complete these processes.