Biomedical subjects

Kathleen Mazor

Publications and source records attributed to Kathleen Mazor.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Reliability and validity of checklists and global ratings by standardized students, trained raters, and faculty raters in an objective structured teaching environment.

BACKGROUND: Objective structured teaching exercises (OSTEs) are relatively new in medical education, with few studies that have reported reliability and validity. PURPOSE: To systematically examine the impact of OSTE design decisions, including number of cases, choice of raters, and type of scoring systems used. METHODS: We examined the impact of number of cases and raters using generalizability theory. We also compared scores from standardized students (SS), faculty raters (FR) and trained graduate student raters (TR), and examined the relation between behavior checklist ratings and global perception scores. RESULTS: Generalizability (g) coefficients for checklist scores were higher for SSs than TRs. The g estimates based on SSs' global scores were higher than g estimates for FRs. SSs' checklist scores were higher than TRs' checklist scores, and SSs' global evaluations were higher than FRs' and TRs' global scores. TRs' relative to SSs' global perceptions correlated more highly with checklist scores. CONCLUSIONS: SSs provide more generalizable checklist scores than TRs. Generalizability estimates for global scores from SSs and FRs were comparable. SSs are lenient raters compared to TRs and FRs.

Education, Medical↗

PubMed2003

Validation of a new measure of concept of a good death.

BACKGROUND: The concept of a good death is central to end-of-life care research. Despite its importance and the high interest in the topic, there are few measures currently available for use in clinical research. PURPOSE: The present work describes the development and testing of a set of items intended to measure the importance of several components posited to be critical to the concept of a good death. It is intended for use with health care providers and lay people in the context of end-of-life care research and education. POPULATION: Four cohorts (n = 596) were recruited to participate, representing two helping profession disciplines, nonhelping professionals, and a range of ages, specifically: (1) undergraduate medical students; (2) master's degree students in nursing; (3) graduate students from the life sciences; and (4) practicing hospice nurses. METHODS: Participants completed self-report questionnaires at baseline and retest. Psychometric analyses included item frequency distributions, factor analysis, alpha reliability, intraclass correlation, and measures of association. RESULTS: The new Concept of a Good Death measure demonstrated good item frequency distributions, acceptable internal consistency reliability, and test-retest stability. Its factor structure revealed that three distinct domains are measured, reflecting the psychosocial/spiritual, physical, and clinical aspects of a good death. An examination of patterns of correlations showed differential associations with death anxiety, spiritual beliefs and practices, anxious mood, and sociodemographic characteristics. CONCLUSIONS: The new Concept of a Good Death instrument appears to measure three distinct factors which people consider important to a Good Death. Ratings of the importance of these factors are reliable and valid. The instrument has the advantage of being a brief, self-report index for use in end-of-life care research.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Development and implementation of an objective structured teaching exercise (OSTE) to evaluate improvement in feedback skills following a faculty development workshop.

BACKGROUND: Faculty development programs focusing on teaching have become widespread. PURPOSE: Despite the popularity of such programs, evidence as to their effectiveness is limited. This article reports on the development of an objective structured teaching exercise (OSTE) and its pilot implementation in an evaluation of a faculty development program module. A written test intended to measure feedback skills was also developed and pilot tested. METHODS: A separate-sample, pretest-posttest design was used to pilot test both instruments. RESULTS: The results showed some evidence of significant differences between groups tested preworkshop and postworkshop. Higher scores were observed for the posttest group compared to the pretest group only for OSTE items focusing on prioritizing and limiting the amount of feedback given at one time and on action planning. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that an OSTE may be sensitive to changes in preceptor skill level for skills that are relatively easy to incorporate immediately into practice. Lack of differences in other skill areas may be due to lack of sensitivity of the measure or to need for practice and reflection before changes in performance on other feedback skills are evident.

Education, Medical↗

PubMed2002

The impact of a brief interclerkship about substance abuse on medical students' skills.

PURPOSE: To examine the immediate and delayed impact of an intensive one- or two-day interclerkship on substance abuse (SA) for third-year medical students. The program is a response to the problem of inadequacy of substance abuse education in the standard curriculum. METHOD: Each year since 1997-98 all third-year students at the University of Massachusetts Medical School have participated in a one- or two-day SA interclerkship to enhance their knowledge and competence with SA assessment and brief intervention. Students' knowledge, attitudes, and confidence were assessed immediately before and after the interclerkship. In addition, during 1998-99, each student's clinical skills in SA assessment and intervention were evaluated at the completion of the student's six-week psychiatry clerkship using objective standardized clinical examinations (OSCEs) with two simulated patients, one with and one without active SA issues. Students who took the psychiatry clerkship in the first half of the year had not yet participated in the interclerkship. Students' pooled performances before and after the interclerkship were compared. RESULTS: Students' attitudes toward and knowledge about SA disorders and their confidence about SA assessment and intervention all showed significant positive changes immediately after the interclerkship. The OSCE performance data demonstrated a significant sustained improvement in clinical skills in SA assessment and intervention as measured up to six months following the interclerkship. CONCLUSION: These data suggest that brief intensive training in SA during the clinical years of medical school can have a positive and lasting impact on students' clinical performances.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Using differences between perceptions of importance and competence to identify teaching needs of primary care preceptors.

BACKGROUND: An important goal of a comprehensive faculty development plan is to improve teaching. This is especially important for clinical preceptors. PURPOSE: This study used a novel approach to assessing the teaching needs of preceptors, an essential and often neglected first step in faculty development. Measurement focused on discrepancies between importance and current performance related to a rich variety of teaching behaviors. This study also considered differences in perceived teaching needs among primary care specialties. METHOD: Twenty-six clerkship directors from 13 participating medical schools in the Northeast United States invited randomly selected family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatric preceptors to complete a teaching needs survey. One hundred five preceptors responded. RESULT: Findings revealed that preceptors most need to develop general teaching skills that will help them save time such as selecting appropriate teaching behaviors, assessing learners' needs and providing appropriate feedback, and helping learners learn independently. On the other hand, preceptors expressed less need to improve teaching related to cost containment, disease prevention, clinical decision making, office management, and using computers to aid teaching. Family practice preceptors rated their current teaching performance significantly higher than pediatric preceptors despite no differences in previous faculty development experience. CONCLUSION: Faculty development for preceptors should focus on general teaching skills relative to teaching skills tied to specific medical areas. Novel approaches to teaching while practicing medicine that increase efficiency should be explored. Faculty developers should consider differences in confidence among preceptors from different specialties.

Clinical Clerkship↗