Summary of the Acre Inaugural Meeting

The charter meeting of the Association of Clinical Researchers and Educators (ACRE) provided a powerful set of arguments against assertions that physician-industry collaboration is harmful and represents a “conflict of interest.” Such collaboration has, in fact, improved medical care for patients, a case made overwhelmingly by patients and patient advocacy groups at the meeting. The contentions that physician-industry collaboration is problematic are not based on evidence. They depend on unjustified generalization from inevitable, sometimes egregious, but vanishingly uncommon adverse outcomes of industry-physician interaction without reference to how so much more commonly these interactions add value. Furthermore, the claim that physician-industry collaboration is unprofessional is refuted by rational scrutiny. Indeed, the term “conflict of interest” itself is vague, inviting subjectivity and deserving to be rejected.The unwarranted success of conflict of interest regulation has prevailed because of the failure of physicians, educators, and innovators, through apathy and intimidation, to pay attention to its fallacies and resist its dangers. It has arisen from activist ambitions and from misalignment between the purposes of medical practitioners, educators, and innovators and those of administrators in medical journals and in academic medical centers. The media and politicians have not appreciated these misalignments and have accepted conflict of interest arguments at face value.Regulation emanating from conflict of interest criticism is confusing, onerous, expensive, disrespectful, and damaging. Prohibitions against speaking about medical products inhibit physician and patient education concerning rapidly emerging and complex therapies. Input by physicians cognizant of compliance requirements into such presentations should be encouraged. Restrictions to the free flow of corporate support of academic health centers, professional societies, and patient organizations threaten to delay medical innovation and education. (Endocr Pract. 2009;15:672-681)     

Sino-U.S. partnerships in research,education, and patient care: The experience of the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC

In 2011, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (UPSOM) and Tsinghua University formed a partnership to further the education of Tsinghua medical students. These students come to UPSOM as visiting research scholars for two years of their eight-year MD curriculum. During this time, the students, who have completed four years at Tsinghua, work full-time in medical school laboratories and research programs of their choice, essentially functioning as graduate students. In their first two months in Pittsburgh, the scholars have a one-week orientation to biomedical research, followed by two-week rotations in four labs selected on the basis of the scholars’ scientific interests, after which they choose one of these labs for the remainder of the two years. Selected labs may be in basic science departments, basic science divisions of clinical departments, or specialized centers that focus on approaches like simulation and modeling. The Tsinghua students also have a brief exposure to clinical medicine. UPSOM has also formed a similar partnership with Central South University Xiangya School of Medicine in Changsha, Hunan Province. The Xiangya students come to UPSOM for two years of research training after their sixth year and, thus, unlike the Tsinghua students, have already completed their clinical rotations. UPSOM faculty members have also paved the way for UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center), UPSOM’s clinical partner, to engage with clinical centers in China. Major relationships involving advisory, training, managerial, and/or equity roles exist with Xiangya International Medical Center, KingMED Diagnostics, First Chengmei Medical Industry Group, and Macare Women’s Hospital. Both UPSOM and UPMC are actively exploring other clinical and academic opportunities in China.     

Preparing faculty to teach in a problem-based learning curriculum: the Sherbrooke experience.

Over the last 6 years Sherbrooke Medical School has undertaken a major reform of its undergraduate curriculum. A new student-centred, community-oriented curriculum was implemented in September 1987. Problem-based learning (PBL) is now the main educational method. To adequately prepare teachers for the curriculum a series of faculty development programs in pedagogy were offered: first, a 2-day introductory workshop to initiate teachers into educational principles and their application in the new program; second, a 1-year basic training program in medical pedagogy; third, a 1-day workshop on PBL; and fourth, a comprehensive 3-day training program in PBL tutoring. Over 60% of all full-time teachers attended the introductory program and 80% the tutor training program. The 1-year basic training program was completed by 33% of the faculty members. The implementation of these programs, coupled with a high participation rate, resulted in a more student-centred educational philosophy and a greater interest in medical education. This had a significant impact when the new curriculum was instituted. Lessons learned from the experience are discussed.     

Physicianship: Educating for professionalism in the post-Flexnarian era

Although he did not write extensively about professionalism, Abraham Flexner clearly understood its critical role in medical practice. In discerning the basics of medical education he characterized scientific methodology as the instrumental minimum. He left open to future generations the task of defining its necessary complement, the "noble behaviors and fine feelings" required of the medical practitioner. Situated within the current professionalism movement, and informed by previous commentary on the enduring attributes of medicine, a curriculum based on "Physicianship"--the physician as healer and professional--can serve as a logical post-Flexnerian curriculum. The conceptual armature of Physicianship and the attributes necessary for the fulfillment of both the professional and healer role can assist in the selection of students and constitute the educational blueprint for medical teaching. The critically important concepts of identity formation and the requirements for the valid and reliable assessment of professional behaviors of students and faculty are essential components. A Physicianship curriculum, as conceived and deployed at the McGill University Faculty of Medicine, might resonate with Flexner.     

Dazed and Confused: Sports Medicine,Conflicts of Interest,and Concussion Management

Professional sports with high rates of concussion have become increasingly concerned about the long-term effects of multiple head injuries. In this context, return-to-play decisions about concussion generate considerable ethical tensions for sports physicians. Team doctors clearly have an obligation to the welfare of their patient (the injured athlete) but they also have an obligation to their employer (the team), whose primary interest is typically success through winning. At times, a team’s interest in winning may not accord with the welfare of an injured player, particularly when it comes to decisions about returning to play after injury. Australia’s two most popular professional football codes—rugby league and Australian Rules football—have adopted guidelines that prohibit concussed players from continuing to play on the same day. I suggest that conflicts of interest between doctors, patients, and teams may present a substantial obstacle to the proper adherence of concussion guidelines. Concussion management guidelines implemented by a sport’s governing body do not necessarily remove or resolve conflicts of interest in the doctor–patient–team triad. The instigation of a concussion exclusion rule appears to add a fourth party to this triad (the National Rugby League or the Australian Football League). In some instances, when conflicts of interest among stakeholders are ignored or insufficiently managed, they may facilitate attempts at circumventing concussion management guidelines to the detriment of player welfare.     

Female sexuality,social reproduction,and the politics of medical intervention in Niger: Kel Ewey Tuareg perspectives

This essay explores connections between political institutions, forms of power, and women's health care concerns from a cultural anthropological perspective. I focus on the roles of different medical establishments among the Kel Ewey Tuareg of Niger—Western-European sponsored, central state, traditional herbalism and Islamic scholarship—in creating, maintaining, and disputing these constructs, through the invention and elaboration of disease categories and through the selective application of medical and reproductive models and technology to women. I also explore women's attempts to manage these forces, as they draw upon a cultural inventory that is alternately supportive and in conflict with their interests.     

Medical Ghostwriting and Informed Consent

Ghostwriting in its various forms has received critical scrutiny from medical ethicists, journal editors, and science studies scholars trying to explain where ghostwriting goes wrong and ascertain how to counter it. Recent analyses have characterized ghostwriting as plagiarism or fraud, and have urged that it be deterred through stricter compliance with journal submission requirements, conflict of interest disclosures, author‐institutional censure, legal remedies, and journals' refusal to publish commercially sponsored articles. As a supplement to such efforts, this paper offers a critical assessment of medical ghostwriting as contrary to good patient care, on the grounds that it contradicts established general principles guiding clinical ethics. Specifically, I argue that ghostwriting undermines trust relationships between authors and their readers, and between these readers and their trusting patients, and in so doing contradicts the duty of respect for patient autonomy by obstructing informed consent. For this reason, complicity in ghostwriting practices should be understood as a violation of the professional ethical duties of physicians and other healthcare workers.     

Systematic evaluation of the teaching qualities of Obstetrics and Gynecology faculty: reliability and validity of the SETQ tools

Background

The importance of effective clinical teaching for the quality of future patient care is globally understood. Due to recent changes in graduate medical education, new tools are needed to provide faculty with reliable and individualized feedback on their teaching qualities. This study validates two instruments underlying the System for Evaluation of Teaching Qualities (SETQ) aimed at measuring and improving the teaching qualities of obstetrics and gynecology faculty.

Methods and Findings

This cross-sectional multi-center questionnaire study was set in seven general teaching hospitals and two academic medical centers in the Netherlands. Seventy-seven residents and 114 faculty were invited to complete the SETQ instruments in the duration of one month from September 2008 to September 2009. To assess reliability and validity of the instruments, we used exploratory factor analysis, inter-item correlation, reliability coefficient alpha and inter-scale correlations. We also compared composite scales from factor analysis to global ratings. Finally, the number of residents'' evaluations needed per faculty for reliable assessments was calculated. A total of 613 evaluations were completed by 66 residents (85.7% response rate). 99 faculty (86.8% response rate) participated in self-evaluation. Factor analysis yielded five scales with high reliability (Cronbach''s alpha for residents'' and faculty): learning climate (0.86 and 0.75), professional attitude (0.89 and 0.81), communication of learning goals (0.89 and 0.82), evaluation of residents (0.87 and 0.79) and feedback (0.87 and 0.86). Item-total, inter-scale and scale-global rating correlation coefficients were significant (P<0.01). Four to six residents'' evaluations are needed per faculty (reliability coefficient 0.60–0.80).

Conclusions

Both SETQ instruments were found reliable and valid for evaluating teaching qualities of obstetrics and gynecology faculty. Future research should examine improvement of teaching qualities when using SETQ.     

Bioethics for clinicians: 17. Conflict of interest in research,education and patient care

A conflict of interest occurs in a situation in which professional judgement regarding a primary interest, such as research, education or patient care, may be unduly influenced by a secondary interest, such as financial gain or personal prestige. Conflicts of interest exist in every walk of life, including medicine and science. There is nothing inherently unethical in finding oneself in a conflict of interest. Rather, the key questions are whether one recognizes the conflict and how one deals with it. Strategies include disclosing the conflict, establishing a system of review and authorization, and prohibiting the activities that lead to the conflict.     

Quackery versus professionalism? Characters,places and media of medical knowledge in eighteenth-century Hungary

This essay discusses the question of health in the Kingdom of Hungary during the Age of Enlightenment. It explores the relationships and tensions between central theories of medical police and the local expectations of government administrators, as well as those between academic or official knowledge and implicit or alternative knowledge about health. The reigns of Maria Theresia and Joseph II marked the moment at which particular kinds of folk and practical knowledge about healing became visible and above all legible. This is to be seen in the enormous rise in book production, which in itself represented an 'approved knowledge' that found legitimation in new academic and bureaucratic institutions, such as the reformed medical faculty of the University of Vienna, the newly-founded medical faculty at Tyrnau, the establishment of a health department within the Hungarian Statthalterei, as well as in the emission of royal legislation supporting the agendas of the new enlightened science of 'medical police'.     

Managerial relations in Kenyan health care: empathy and the limits of governmentality

This article describes relationships between a team of mid‐level government health managers working in a rural Kenyan district and those whom they managed: health workers based at rural health facilities. In this context, managerial expertise was heavily informed by personal biography and a moral obligation to empathize with the difficult working conditions and familial responsibilities of junior staff. Management should be studied seriously in anthropology, as a powerful social and bureaucratic form. This focus must extend beyond a concern with tactics and technologies of governance to consider how modalities of managerial expertise are also shaped by biography, intersubjectivity, and professional identity.     

Ecosystem Health in Professional Education: The Path Ahead

This supplement shows that ecosystem health has become a vital part of the curriculum in a small number of medical, veterinary, and public health schools. This limited, but important, experience provides the groundwork for further expansion into other professional schools and into other universities. Although ecosystem health has defined underlying principles, previous experience has shown that each professional faculty should define what ecosystem health means for the institution and for its students. Based on this definition, it is important that detailed learning objectives be defined for ecosystem health as it pertains to the profession. A model for further development is proposed in this editorial. This model focuses on developing the necessary skill sets for ecosystem health education, the expansion of ecosystem health into earlier and later stages of learning (high school through undergraduate, through postgraduate, and onto practicing professional levels), and raising the awareness of ecosystem health in the local community and at national and international levels. Once comprehensive, transdisciplinary, continuous ecosystem health programs become mainstream, one can expect a “sea change” in the attention given to the interrelationship between humans and their environments, and a more concerted effort to restore the health of our planetary ecosystems.     

专科层次临床医学专业课程建设效果调查分析

目的:了解临床医学专业课程建设情况,总结专科层次临床医学专业教育教学的主要成绩,查找专业建设存在的问题,为专科层次临床医学专业教育教学改革提出改进意见。方法:对我校2013届(应届生)306名、2011届和2012届(往届生)333名专科层次临床医学专业毕业生进行问卷调查,主要调查内容包括:课程内容、课程资源和课程评价。结果:专科层次临床医学专业毕业生认为本专业核心课程知识和技能模块设计合理,且应届毕业生认可度高于往届毕业生;对专业类纸质图书、纸质期刊等课程资源满意度高,认为专业类精品课程、教学视频等课程资源需要进一步改善;毕业生对专业知识考评认可度较高,应届生认可度优于往届生。结论:专科层次临床医学专业课程建设效果较好,特别是课程内容安排和课程评价合理,但在专业技能训练和课程资源建设方面需重点加强。     

高校生物化学首堂课教学方法探索与实践

生物化学作为医学、生命科学等专业学生必修的一门学科基础课程,理论性强、概念抽象、内容较多、逻辑关系复杂,是教学难度相对较大的一门课程。本文通过阐述在首堂课授课过程中,从任课教师如何塑造良好的自身形象,如何形象生动地引入生物化学的研究内容,如何通过展现生物化学的魅力来激发学生的学习热情和兴趣,如何使用巧妙的方法学好这门课程,以及如何将课程思政理念融入到生物化学课程中等诸多方面,探讨了在授课过程中的一些教学方法和实践,以期改变生物化学课堂不受学生喜爱的现状,为生物化学课程教学改革提供一些思路和参考。     

Innovations in human genetics education. Incorporation of genetics into a problem-based medical school curriculum.

There has been recent interest in the development of problem-based human genetics curricula in U.S. medical schools. The College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University has had a problem-based curriculum since 1974. The vertical integration of genetics within the problem-based curriculum, called "Track II," has recently been revised. On first inspection, the curriculum appeared to lack a significant genetics component; however, on further analysis it was found that many genetics concepts were covered in the biochemistry, microbiology, pathology, and clinical science components. Both basic science concepts and clinical applications of genetics are covered in the curriculum by providing appropriate references for basic concepts and including inherited conditions within the differential diagnosis in the cases studied. Evaluations consist of a multiple-choice content exam and a modified essay exam based on a clinical case, allowing evaluation of both basic concepts and problem-solving ability. This curriculum prepares students to use genetics in a clinical context in their future careers.     

The Current Status of Preclinical Endocrine Education in U.S. Medical Schools

ObjectiveTo characterize the current landscape of preclinical medical endocrine education in U.S. allopathic medical schools.MethodsU.S. endocrine curriculum directors were asked to voluntarily complete a 16-question email survey surveying the status of endocrine preclinical education at their medical school.ResultsSixty-nine of 155 (45%) endocrine block director respondents completed the online survey between July 2021 and September 2021. A larger incoming class, a longer duration of the endocrine curriculum, and the offering of a separate endocrine curriculum (ie apart from the teaching of other organ systems) were each independently associated with an increased number of faculty teaching the course. Schools that used a gland-/organ-based curriculum only and those that used a combination of gland-/organ-based curriculum with topic-based curriculum differed significantly in their use of large lectures, small groups, and several curriculum components, including point of care glucose testing, continuous glucose monitoring, and insulin pumps.ConclusionThis survey study reports the current landscape of preclinical endocrine education in the United States and describes opportunities to improve interest in pursuing endocrinology as a career.     

Conflicts over host manipulation between different parasites and pathogens: Investigating the ecological and medical consequences

When parasites have different interests in regard to how their host should behave this can result in a conflict over host manipulation, i.e. parasite induced changes in host behaviour that enhance parasite fitness. Such a conflict can result in the alteration, or even complete suppression, of one parasite's host manipulation. Many parasites, and probably also symbionts and commensals, have the ability to manipulate the behaviour of their host. Non‐manipulating parasites should also have an interest in host behaviour. Given the frequency of multiple parasite infections in nature, potential conflicts of interest over host behaviour and manipulation may be common. This review summarizes the evidence on how parasites can alter other parasite's host manipulation. Host manipulation can have important ecological and medical consequences. I speculate on how a conflict over host manipulation could alter these consequences and potentially offer a new avenue of research to ameliorate harmful consequences of host manipulation.     

The impact and effectiveness of faculty development program in fostering the faculty’s knowledge,skills, and professional competence: A systematic review and meta-analysis

BackgroundFaculty vitality is the main ingredient to enhance professional education and competence. Enriching the faculty vitality in key domains of teaching, assessing, research, professionalism, and administration is perceived to improve educational environment significantly and enhances the academic performance of learners. Faculty development program (FDP) has been considered as a stand-alone educational pedagogy in fostering knowledge and professional skills of faculty. However, few studies have provided objective reports about the impact of such programs in a healthcare system.MethodsThis research was conducted by selecting data sources of PubMed-Medline, Wiley online library, Cochrane library, Taylor & Francis Online, CINAHL, Springer link, Proquest, ISI Web of knowledge, ScienceDirect, EJS, EBSCO, Blackwell, Emerald and ABI Inform. This search followed a step-wise approach defined by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). A total of 37 studies that explored the impact of FDPs on medical and allied health faculty’s professional development were selected.ResultsThis meta-analysis reported a mean effect size of 0.73 that reflects a significant and positive impact of FDPs in enhancing faculty’s knowledge and professional competence (z-statistics of 4.46 significant at p-value < 0.05) using the random effects model and forest plot.ConclusionThis article reiterates the incorporation of FDPs in all healthcare institutions for improving the academic performance of faculty with resultant enrichment of learners’ knowledge and skills.