Debra L Klamen

• MD, MHPE
• Chair at Southern Illinois University Springfield

The required adjustments precipitated by the coronavirus disease 2019 crisis have been challenging, but also represent a critical opportunity for the evolution and potential disruptive and constructive change of medical education. Given that the format of medical education is not fixed, but malleable and in fact must be adaptable to societal needs...

Phenomenon: Detection of visual and auditory clinical findings is part of medical students’ core clinical performance abilities that a medical education curriculum should teach, assess, and remediate. However, there is a limited understanding of how students develop these skills. While training physical exam technical skills has received significan...

Introduction: ASPIRE Excellence Awards in Student Assessment are offered to medical schools with innovative and comprehensive assessment programmes adjudged by international experts, using evidence-based criteria. The journeys of three ASPIRE-winning medical schools toward "assessment excellence" are presented. These schools include Aga Khan Unive...

The authors present follow-up to a prior publication, which proposed a new model for third-year clerkships. The new model was created to address deficiencies in the clinical year and to rectify a recognized mismatch between students' learning needs and the realities of today's clinical settings. The new curricular model was implemented at Southern...

Student engagement refers to a broad range of activities where students participate in management, education, research, and community activities within their institutions. It is a mutually beneficial collaborative approach between students and their institutions. This article provides practical advice for the implementation or further development o...

Publications and organizations ranking medical schools rely heavily on schools’ research-oriented and grant-success data because those are the publicly available data. To address the vacuum of evidence for medical education quality, in 2012 the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE) introduced an initiative entitled A Schools Programme...

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. This Personal View article describes the experience of Southern Illinois University School of Medicine (SIUSOM) with the AMEE School Programme for International Recognition of Excellence in Education (ASPIRE) awards program. Institutional leaders considering applying may need somethi...

Background: The idea of competency-based education sounds great on paper. Who wouldn't argue for a standardized set of performance-based assessments to assure competency in graduating students and residents? Even so, conceptual concerns have already been raised about this new system and there is yet no evidence to refute their veracity. Aims: We...

This study is based on the premise that the game of 'Twenty Questions' (TQ) tests the knowledge people acquire through their lives and how well they organise and store it so that they can effectively retrieve, combine and use it to address new life challenges. Therefore, performance on TQ may predict how effectively medical school applicants will o...

There are many calls in the literature for changes in how medical students are educated. Although many curricular innovations have been attempted, a look at the theory behind how complex skills are learned provides useful information to guide new curriculum developments. The requirement of deliberate practice as the road map for success in the lear...

As part of the outcomes-based accreditation process, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) now requires that medical specialties formulate and use educational milestones to assess residents' performance. These milestones are specialty-specific achievements that residents are expected to demonstrate at established interval...

To determine the diagnostic justification proficiency of senior medical students across a broad spectrum of cases with common chief complaints and diagnoses. The authors gathered diagnostic justification exercise data from the Senior Clinical Comprehensive Examination taken by Southern Illinois University School of Medicine's students from the clas...

Patient safety is an important topic that has been receiving more attention in the current health care climate. Patient safety as a curriculum topic in medical schools has only become apparent in the late 1990s, and much more needs to be done. This article summarizes patient safety curricular content as it occurred (or did not occur) in medical edu...

Context: The process whereby medical students employ integrated analytic and non-analytic diagnostic strategies is not fully understood. Analysing academic performance data could provide a perspective complementary to that of laboratory experiments when investigating the nature of diagnostic strategy. This study examined the performance data of me...

Background: Residents with performance problems create substantial burden on programs and institutions. Understanding the nature and quality of performance problems can help in learning to address performance problems. Aim: We sought to illuminate the effects of resident performance problems and the potential solutions for those problems from th...

To develop an evidence-based approach to the identification, prevention, and management of surgical residents with behavioral problems. The American College of Surgeons and Southern Illinois University Department of Surgery hosted a 1-day think tank to develop strategies for early identification of problem residents and appropriate interventions. P...

Fostering ability to organize and use medical knowledge to guide data collection, make diagnostic decisions, and defend those decisions is at the heart of medical training. However, these abilities are not systematically examined prior to graduation. This study examined diagnostic justification (DXJ) ability of medical students shortly before gradu...

Little is known about the acquisition of clinical reasoning skills in medical school, the development of clinical reasoning over the medical curriculum as a whole, and the impact of various curricular methodologies on these skills. This study investigated (1) whether there are differences in clinical reasoning skills between learners at different y...

This study was designed to determine whether preclerkship performance examinations could accurately identify medical students at risk for failing a senior clinical performance examination (CPE). This study used a retrospective case-control, multiyear design, with contingency table analyses, to examine the performance of 412 students in the classes...

Current remediation strategies for students failing standardized patient examinations represent poorly targeted approaches since the specific nature of clinical performance weaknesses has not been defined. The purpose is to determine the impact of a specifically targeted clinical performance course required of students who failed a clinical perform...

Medical schools recognize the importance of following up on graduates to evaluate performance during residency. Such performance is of particular interest for schools with problem-based learning (PBL) and conventional curriculum tracks. Our purposes were to determine any differences in ratings of resident performance in 3 competency areas compared...

Patient safety has emerged as a global concern in the provision of quality health care, and yet, to date, few medical schools have created and/or implemented patient safety curricula. The purpose of this article is to introduce readers to one model of a patient safety undergraduate medical curriculum, as designed by a group of experts attending an...

Working knowledge of physicians manifests as a combination of diagnostic pattern recognition and clinical data interpretation (analytic fact checking). The purpose was to study medical student acquisition of these abilities as a function of years of medical training/experience. A cross-sectional study involving students who had completed 0, 1, 2, a...

Skill acquisition and maintenance requires spaced deliberate practice. Assessing medical students' physical examination performance ability is resource intensive. The authors assessed the nature and size of physical examination performance samples necessary to accurately estimate total physical examination skill. Physical examination assessment dat...

This paper explores the core teaching beliefs of medical school faculty and establishes whether these beliefs differ among basic science, clinical, and instruction specialist faculty. One hundred and twenty-five medical school teachers who were members of professional organizations dedicated to the improvement of medical school teaching completed a...

The authors offer a practical guide for improving the appraisal of a resident's performance. They identify six major factors that compromise the process of observing, measuring, and characterizing a resident's current performance, forecasting future performance, and making decisions about the resident's progress. Factors that compromise any of thes...

To evaluate the use of a systems approach for diagnosing performance assessment problems in surgery residencies, and intervene to improve the numeric precision of global rating scores and the behavioral specificity of narrative comments. Faculty and residents at two surgery programs participated in parallel before- and-after trials. During the base...

Second-year medical students performed a head-to-toe screening physical examination on trained patient instructors (PIs) as a high-stakes examination before beginning clinical clerkships. PIs completed a 138-item checklist and instructed the students in the proper performance of any incorrectly executed or omitted items. To assess the accuracy of t...

Global ratings based on observing convenience samples of clinical performance form the primary basis for appraising the clinical competence of medical students, residents, and practicing physicians. This review explores cognitive, social, and environmental factors that contribute unwanted sources of score variation (bias) to clinical performance ev...

Standardized patients (SPs) were used in a 9-week Introduction to Psychodynamic Psychotherapy course for 11 first-year psychiatry residents. After 7 weeks of coursework, each resident conducted a simulated initial psychotherapy session. The SPs used were experienced in simulating psychiatric disorders and were free to use as much or as little perso...

Addiction to alcohol and other drugs is a serious public health problem that is one of the most common disorders seen in medical practice. Although it is an extremely common disorder, it is poorly diagnosed and treated by physicians. Training about addictions must begin early in the medical student's career and continue in a vertically integrated w...

Second year medical students at a large midwestern university were surveyed about their attitudes regarding AIDS. Results indicated: (1) students with homosexual and/or HIV-positive friends were significantly more tolerant toward AIDS patients, (2) over half the students believed that treating AIDS patients may be hazardous and that their education...

To determine whether homophobia existed in a sample of the second-year medical school class before beginning a course on Human Sexuality. We administered a questionnaire to a sample of the second-year class at an introductory lecture to the course on Human Sexuality. This questionnaire asked twelve questions regarding attitudes about homosexuality,...

Most medications with major potential for abuse and addiction belong to the sedative-hypnotic class. This encompasses benzodiazepines, barbiturates, and the opiates (including natural and synthetic derivations of opium) (Jaffe, 1990; Jaffe & Martin, 1990; Rall, 1990). This chapter is devoted to the sedative-hypnotic class, featuring benzodiazepines...

A multi-site, longitudinal study of patients undergoing outpatient alcohol and drug dependence treatment was conducted in private outpatient facilities, consisting of 2,029 subjects from 33 independent programs enrolled in a national addiction treatment outcomes registry. Pretreatment demographic and substance variables, treatment utilization varia...

Addiction to alcohol and other drugs is a serious public health problem that is one of the most common disorders seen in medical practice. Although it is an extremely common disorder, it is poorly diagnosed and treated by physicians. In order to begin to develop an integrated approach to education and addiction, one must define the many roles of th...

Psychotherapy supervision remains a crucial element in psychiatric residency training. The rapidly changing health care system is forcing supervisors to explore new methods of psychotherapy training. Supervisors must contend with decreased time for supervision, increased numbers of patients per resident, and patient cases that turn over more quickl...

To determine whether first-year medical students could correctly identify and directly respond to patients' observed behaviors. In January 1995, 166 first-year students at the University of Illinois College of Medicine were shown a videotape of six patients vignettes illustrating three types of patient behaviors (anger, seduction, and hypochondrias...

It is estimated that 30–40% of patients presenting to primary care physicians will have a primary or secondary mental illness. Despite the large number of patients being seen, primary care physicians underdiagnose and undertreat those with identifiable psychiatric disorders. In order to meet the needs of future primary care practitioners, there mus...

The authors present a model of inpatient community meetings conducted as large-group interpretive psychotherapy. The model focuses on the examination of relationships between patients and staff in the here-and-now and the patient group's maladaptive ways of interpreting staff members' behavior. The group leader and other staff members listen to pat...

To determine whether medical students' interpersonal and communication skills, as measured by satisfaction ratings given by standardized patients (SPs), improves or deteriorates with additional training and experience. A longitudinal study was made of a single cohort of 133 medical students scheduled to graduate in 1994 from the University of Illin...

To assess whether preclinical medical students hold liberal or conservative attitudes regarding abortion, we administered a standardized questionnaire to 72 second-year medical students at a large urban university. We enquired whether they considered abortion murder, or a legitimate personal choice, and under which circumstances they would perform...

Stress management workshops have been used in psychiatric training programs, both the medical student and resident levels. However, their use has been sparingly described. A workshop of this nature was adapted for use with medical students at the University of Illinois and presented as an elective in 1994 and 1995. Seventeen percent of the students...

No abstract available. (C) 1996 Association of American Medical Colleges

The diagnosis of depression has been viewed as an important factor in the treatment response for those who have alcohol and other drug dependence. The objective of the study was to examine the prevalence of a lifetime history of major depression in inpatients with a substance use disorder in addictions treatment. An evaluation study of 6,355 patien...

To evaluate whether stresses experienced by physicians during internship are associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, the authors administered a standardized questionnaire to assess PTSD symptoms, depressive and anxiety symptoms, and social supports to 212 residents. Thirteen percent of residents met diagnostic criteria for PT...

Abstract— The near-UV (NUV, 300 400 nm) sensitivity of logarithmically growing Escherichia coli cells of the fatty acid auxotroph K1060 increases with the number of carbon-carbon double bonds in the fatty acid used as supplement. Cultures of K.1060 grown to stationary phase on unsaturated fatty acids of the same chain length but differing in the nu...