New publications as of December 20, 2021

2021-12-20

Major Contributions:

Canadiana:

You Should Try This:

Commentary and Opinions

Works-in-Progress:

Letters to the Editor

Read on for full summaries of the new articles. 

Major Contributions:

Performance of Black and Indigenous applicants in a medical school admissions process by Rashid et al. compared the admission process for Black and Indigenous applications with applicants who did not self-identify. They found no difference in acceptance rates compared to non-self-identified applicants but were concerned about the substantially more declines by successful Black applicants after an offer of admission.

Violato and team, in their study Conformity, obedience, and the Better than Average Effect in health professional students, used hypothetical compliance vignettes to test whether health professional students expect that they would behave better than average in these scenarios. Based on the results of their study, students believed themselves to be less susceptible to conformity and obedience than peers. The authors determined that an increased awareness of this self-assessment bias could promote patient safety by helping students avoid overestimating performance and increasing personal responsibility for practice outcomes.

Développement et mise à l’essai du Guide de rétroaction francophone pour l’observation directe des résidents en médecine familiale au Canada by Lacasse and team developed a francophone guide for documenting direct observation feedback in francophone Canadian family medicine programs.  They tested the guide through a video simulation. Using qualitative content analysis, they determined that the guide was useful for equipping French-speaking Canadian supervisors and residents. This is a French language contribution.

A proposed learning environment framework for virtual care by Liu et al. discussed tailoring a medical education learning environment (LE) framework to a virtual clinical setting. They explored the four framework components of personal, social, organizational, physical/virtual spaces and how they can be incorporated in virtual care. Their guide is a useful tool for shaping the LE in virtual care and highlights aspects of its integration that require further attention.

Residents’ transformational changes through self-regulated, experiential learning for professionalism by Janet de Groot and team looked at how residents identify professionalism challenges within the clinical workplace. Their study found that many residents experienced and described transformative personal and professional growth through addressing professionalism challenges.

Canadiana:

Medical student wellness in Canada: time for a national curriculum framework by Bourcier et al. called for the creation of a standardized wellness curriculum framework for Canadian undergraduate medical education. They argued that such a framework would support physicians throughout their training and positively contribute to the quality of patient care.

In their article, High frequency of otolaryngology/ENT encounters in Canadian primary care despite low medical undergraduate experiences by Sorichetti and co-authors found that 9% of adult visits and 29% of pediatric visits to Canadian primary care physicians were Ear, Nose, Throat (ENT) symptom related. Due to the high prevalence, they called for an increase in ENT medical education for undergraduate medical students, residents, and primary care physicians.

“There's always something to talk about!” The unexpected benefits of going virtual in a Canadian diversity mentorship program by Ming Li and team described some of the benefits uncovered from switching to an online format for their diversity mentorship program. For example, one-to-one online mentorship meetings from the comfort of one’s own setting allowed for a safe space and more relaxed experience. They concluded that the virtual format had great potential for mentoring medical students.

You Should Try This:

Energizing scholarly activity in a regional medical campus by Amanda Bell and team described a scholarly activity program designed to increase learner and faculty engagement and productivity through the five pillars engagement, investment, education, tracking, and celebration. They concluded that their program could be used as a template for other regional teaching sites.

Commentary and Opinions:

Challenging the inequities of family planning in medical training by Usmani and Sarma commented on the challenges of motherhood for women in medicine. They called for a medical culture supportive of physician mothers to help bridge this gender gap of family planning in medicine.

Dermatology education in skin of colour: where we are and where do we go? by Onasanya and Liu commented on the under representation of Skin of Colour within medical school dermatology curricula. They called for strategies to improve skin of colour dermatology education for medical trainees such as including sufficient images of skin diseases in darker skin tones lectures.

Advancing mentorship opportunities of LGBTQ+ youth through a novel cascading mentorship and advocacy training model for medical students by Blatman and team described an extra-curricular training mentorship program in which medical students mentor youth who are considered ‘at-risk’, while receiving mentorship by resident physicians. They encouraged similar initiatives for mentorship in other locations.

In their commentary, Beyond the mask, Chun and Hall reflected on the challenges to patient-doctor interactions caused by COVID-19 and the necessary restrictions. They maintained that it was essential to preserve that human connection between patients and providers despite the separation caused by physical barriers and masks.

Pareto distribution in virtual education: challenges and opportunities by Valkanas and Diamandis applied Pareto's law of the vital few (or 80/20 rule) to their experiences of virtual education during the COVID-19 pandemic. They found that only three or four of their videos were responsible for the majority (>80%) of their channel’s output.

Works-in-Progress:

Cutting corners: donning under duress – a VR teaching tool by Bansal and team used videos as a teaching tool in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. They wanted to ensure that healthcare workers adhered to proper personal protective equipment donning procedures in both the high- and low-stress environments using virtual reality training. They plan to expand the content of these videos to a variety of settings surrounding pandemic.

Letters to the Editor

Rao and Agarwal wrote Culinary medicine: exploring diet with tomorrow’s doctors as a response to the previously published article, Interprofessional culinary education workshops at the University of Saskatchewan by Lieffers et al. They supported the role of nutrition within the medical education curriculum, and called for it as a compulsory teaching component