5 rules for creating great Powerpoint presentations
As much as people talk about “Death by Powerpoint”, many of us still use Powerpoint despite its many shortcomings. So how can we make our Powerpoint talks better? This video reviews 5 great rules to live by. Interestingly, this dynamic video was built using Powerpoint by Nancy Duarte from Duarte Design. Of note, Duarte Design was the company behind the stunning slides which Al Gore used to present his compelling talk on An Inconvenient Truth. [+]
What is "contextualizing" patient care?
Medicine is as much about Science as it is about Art. This is no better illustrated than an educational intervention study about “contextualizing” patient care, published in JAMA. What is contextualization? It is the “process of identifying individual patient circumstances (their context) and, if necessary, modifying the plan of care to accommodate those circumstances”. In other words, this is care beyond the evidence-based guidelines, beyond standardized quality measures, and beyond the checklists. [+]
Do you belong to a listserv? My favorites
An email mailing list (or listserv) is a great way to communicate with a large group of people. Once you subscribe to a mailing list, an email sent to a single, common email address will be distributed to everyone who is subscribed to the list. You can find lists for nearly everything and anything! There are a multitude of lists for various medical specialties. These lists unite people from all over the country (and world) from various practice backgrounds such as academic/community medical centers to rural hospitals/clinics. We are all connected by the power of the internet. The lists are [+]
New favorite blog: Wishful thinking in medical education
Wishful Thinking in Medical Education I recently came upon this great blog by Dr. Anne Marie Cunningham, a general practitioner and Clinical Lecturer at Wales, UK. She has some really insightful posts about education, its future, and the use of new technologies. This blog has been in existence since 2008. Just as interesting are the tons of comments that she gets from a spectrum of readers. Check it out! She is also extremely active on Twitter with over 2,000 followers (@amcunningham).
Article Review: Student documentation in the chart
Do you have medical students rotating in your Emergency Department? Are they allowed to document in the medical record? Charting in the medical record is the cornerstone of clinical communication. You document your findings, your clinical reasoning, and management plan. The medical record allows communication amongst providers. Chart documentation is a crucial skill that every medical student should know, as stated by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). [+]
Getting a subpoena: What is an expert witness?
Well, it’s an inevitable part of working in an Emergency Department. I got a subpoena recently and now have to go in to testify on a trauma patient. I’ve gotten a few subpoenas before on trauma patients, but fortunately most cases were settled out of court. First of all, I think it’s an ethical responsibility of emergency physicians to describe what we saw and did in the care of the injured patient in the legal system. However, I have found that the few lawyers I have interacted with slowly expand their scope of questions to cover things NOT in the [+]
Article Review: Rethinking the premed requirements
Think back to your college years. Remember those premed courses that you had to take? Biology, chemistry, physics… oh my. How helpful were these in your preparation for medical school and clinical practice? In 1981, the Association of American Medical Colleges assembled a group, the General Professional Education of the Physician and College Preparation for Medicine (GPEP) to relook at these premed requirements. In 1984, the published a report “Physicians for the Twenty-First Century”. They advocated that the intensive premed requirements overly skews students’ education towards a “narrow objective of medical school admission”. Education is not balanced to include broader [+]
Trick of the Trade: Increasing students responses to the differential diagnosis
Anyone who teaches medicine asks students to list their differential diagnosis when discussing a new clinical case. It’s also part of several models for education including the One-Minute Preceptor and SNAPPS. For the most part, students are good at coming up with answers to the differential, but what do you do when they strike out? Or what if the answer is always the same, i.e. chest pain = myocardial infarction? [+]
Article Review: Use of Effective Questioning
Asking effective questions is a valuable skill for any teacher. As a junior faculty member working to improve my teaching, I’m often in awe of my more experienced colleagues when I have the chance to watch them teach. At times, it’s quite easy to pick out the skills that they put into action but occasionally, their expertise is much more subtle. Effective questioning falls into this category. [+]
Incorporating debriefing into clinical practice
I’m in the middle of an intense weeklong course on debriefing for medical simulation here in Cambridge, MA. One of the goals many of the participants share is our desire to improve our skills in the art of debriefing after clinical simulations. Although the course focuses on “Debriefing with Good Judgement” 1 today the faculty also offered a simple tool to structure a brief debrief when time is very limited. [+]