Keyna Bracken

• BSc, MD
• Professor (Associate) at McMaster University

To better understand the link between formative assessments and progress difficulty, we conducted an analysis in the undergraduate MD program of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine by comparing formative assessment scores on Short Answer Questions (SAQ) called Concept Application Exercises (CAE) with subsequent progress difficulty. CAE score...

Introduction Self-directed peer feedback is integral to the problem-based learning (PBL) process, but poorly scaffolded feedback processes can be inefficient and ineffective and there is little guidance on how students should structure these processes. This study aims to identify implementation considerations for a group function reflection tool an...

Traditional approaches to marking short-answer questions face limitations in timeliness, scalability, inter-rater reliability, and faculty time costs. Harnessing generative artificial intelligence (AI) to address some of these shortcomings is attractive. This study aims to validate the use of ChatGPT for evaluating short-answer assessments in an un...

OBJECTIVES ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence model that can interpret free-text prompts and return detailed, human-like responses across a wide domain of subjects. This study evaluated the extent of the threat posed by ChatGPT to the validity of short-answer assessment problems used to examine pre-clerkship medical students in our undergraduate...

Background Clerkship is a challenging transition for medical students where they learn to apply functional knowledge and diagnostic reasoning skills learned in the pre–clinical phase into the clinical environment. Rather than a smooth continuum to facilitate application of knowledge, clerkship blocks are discrete, fragmented structures with little...

Introduction Many developed countries have reported shortages of Primary Care (PC) physicians. The lack of a regular primary physician is associated with inferior health outcomes. One strategy to address this shortage is to increase the proportion of medical students selecting a Family Medicine (FM) or PC career. The purpose of this systematic revi...

Background Evidence from epidemiological and animal studies support the concept of programming fetal, neonatal, and adult health in response to in utero exposures such as maternal obesity and lifestyle variables. Excess gestational weight gain (GWG), maternal physical activity, and sub-optimal and excess nutrition during pregnancy may program the o...

Context Medical learners are vulnerable to the social power used by preceptors. Furthermore, an individual's perceived level of personal empowerment has been identified as a predictor of positive behaviour in education environments. The degree to which medical students feel empowered in their clinical environments factors largely into how vulnerabl...

Objective: To provide family physicians with information on the efficacy, safety, public health effects, and cost-effectiveness of the 9-valent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. Quality of evidence: Relevant publications in PubMed up to May 2015 were reviewed and analyzed. Most evidence cited is level I (randomized controlled trials and meta-a...

There is an urgent need to prevent excessive pregnancy weight gain, a contributor to both maternal and child obesity. However, the majority of women had reported not being counseled to gain an appropriate amount of gestational weight by their health care providers. We developed a knowledge translation (KT) tool designed to facilitate the clinical i...

Although most young adults with mood and anxiety disorders do not seek treatment, those who are better informed about mental health problems are more likely to use services. The authors used conjoint analysis to model strategies for providing information about anxiety and depression to young adults. Participants (N = 1,035) completed 17 choice task...

To determine the self-reported counselling practices of health care providers with regard to prenatal weight gain and the risks of inappropriate gain. We conducted a cross-sectional survey using a self-administered questionnaire at obstetrician, midwifery, and family medicine clinics in Hamilton, Ontario. Health care providers were eligible to part...

We hypothesized that differences in models of care between health care providers would result in variations in patients' reports of counselling. Our objective was to compare what women reported being advised about weight gain during pregnancy and the risks of inappropriate weight gain according to their type of health care provider. A cross-section...

The purpose of this study was to determine the information that pregnant women report receiving when being counseled about weight gain and the risks of inappropriate gain. With the use of a self-administered questionnaire at prenatal clinics in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, a cross-sectional survey was conducted of women who had had at least 1 prenata...