ACCME to host Educational Measurement Workshop

Click here to access the news release. Click here to access the workshop brochure.

Open access KT article

Click here to access "Riding the knowledge translation roundabout: lessons learned from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Summer Institute in knowledge translation" (just published in the online journal Implementation Science). A key lesson learned is that knowledge translation "is interdisciplinary and collaborative".

Patient education?

From the Healthcare Finance News article:

Thirty days after their hospital discharge, the 370 patients who participated in the RED program had 30 percent fewer subsequent emergency visits and readmissions than the 368 patients who did not. Nearly all (94 percent) of the patients who participated in the RED program left the hospital with a follow-up appointment with their primary care physician, compared to 35 percent for patients who did not participate.

And 91 percent of participants had their discharge information sent to their primary care physician within 24 hours of leaving the hospital.

Click here to access the HFN article. Click here to access the Annals of Internal Medicine article (sub. req.).

Delivering bad news

Is there a good way to tell a mother that her daughter has died? Let's say there is a compassionate way to do so and doctors in training at Emory University School of Medicine get to practice delivering bad news in a simulation workshop:

"They might not remember your name, but they will remember exactly the phrasing you used, how you said it, if they were confused," she tells the doctors. "People can recall that event very, very vividly. People can relive that and replay that." To avoid any confusion or misunderstanding, she advises the doctors to choose their words carefully. Instead of saying "passed on" or "not going to make it," she tells them to be straightforward. "I've seen family members be confused when someone goes in to talk about the news of death and (the doctors) can't actually say the person has died."

Click here to access the CNN.com article.

Errors in diagnosis

According to Dr. Jerome Groopman, misdiagnosis occurs in 15 to 20 percent of cases. Why? Because of how doctors think:

Only very recently have medical educators begun to focus squarely on the problem of misdiagnosis, why it occurs, and what might be done to prevent it. It turns out that errors in thinking do not occur in isolation, but usually arise from a cascade of sequential cognitive mistakes.

I only learned this recently when I realized I did not know how I think; in fact, when I asked other clinicians how they succeeded or failed in making a diagnosis, very few could explain how their mind works to decipher a patient's problems.

Click here to read the Boston Globe article. What implications do you think this might have for CME?

Military investing in medical simulation training centers

As reported in the New York Times, the U.S. Army is in the process of building 18 new medical simulation training centers worldwide in order to optimize combat medic training. One of these training centers is located at Fort Drum. The four simulation rooms at Fort Drum can be used to present medics-in-training with not only medical dilemmas but with "psychological, emotional and moral dilemmas".

For CME providers interested in learning more about medical simulation, please click here to go to the Society for Simulation in Healthcare's website. This society was formed in January 2004 and is comprised of educators and researchers interested in using a "variety of simulation techniques for education, testing, and research in health care". It now has over 1,000 members!