Project description:Music listeners have difficulty correctly understanding and remembering song lyrics. However, results from the present study support the hypothesis that young adults can learn African-American English (AAE) vocabulary from listening to hip-hop music. Non-African-American participants first gave free-response definitions to AAE vocabulary items, after which they answered demographic questions as well as questions addressing their social networks, their musical preferences, and their knowledge of popular culture. Results from the survey show a positive association between the number of hip-hop artists listened to and AAE comprehension vocabulary scores. Additionally, participants were more likely to know an AAE vocabulary item if the hip-hop artists they listen to use the word in their song lyrics. Together, these results suggest that young adults can acquire vocabulary through exposure to hip-hop music, a finding relevant for research on vocabulary acquisition, the construction of adolescent and adult identities, and the adoption of lexical innovations.
Project description:Podcasts have become increasingly popular tools for medical education in recent years. Only requiring a computer or smart phone, podcasts are readily accessible to healthcare professionals, helping to disseminate medical information quickly and creating a wide community of listeners. With numerous medical podcasts available and limited spare time, it can be challenging for a healthcare professional to identify the most high-yield podcast. This perspectives piece describes the role of podcasts in medical education before sharing five in-depth recommendations from Yale School of Nursing and Yale School of Medicine students and faculty. These five podcasts are: The Curbsiders Internal Medicine Podcast, Flip the Script, The Clinical Problem Solvers, 2 Docs Talk, and Key Literature in Medical Education (KeyLIME) Podcast. Each podcast summary includes its average length, the episode frequency, the intended audience, a brief description, a representative episode, and quotes from interviews with the podcast hosts.
Project description:Purpose Uncertainty, or the conscious awareness of having doubts, is pervasive in medicine, from differential diagnoses and the sensitivity of diagnostic tests, to the absence of a single known recovery path. While openness about uncertainty is necessary for shared decision-making and is a pillar of patient-centered care, it is a challenge to do so while preserving patient confidence. The authors’ aim was to develop, pilot, and evaluate an uncertainty communication curriculum to prepare medical students and residents to confidently navigate such conversations. Methods The authors developed ADAPT, a mnemonic framework to improve student comprehension and recall of the important steps in uncertainty disclosure: assess the patient’s knowledge, disclose uncertainty directly, acknowledge patient emotions, plan next steps, and temper expectations. Using this framework, the authors developed, piloted, and evaluated an uncertainty communications course as part of an ongoing communication curriculum for second year medical students in 2020 and with surgical residents in 2021. Results Learner confidence in uncertainty communication skills significantly increased post-class. Resident confidence in disclosing uncertainty was significantly correlated with observer ratings of their related communication skills during simulation. Students expressed positive experiences of the class, noting particular appreciation for the outline of steps included in the ADAPT framework, and the ability to observe a demonstration prior to practice. Conclusions The ADAPT communication curriculum was effective at increasing learner confidence and performance in communicating uncertainty. More rigorous evaluation of the ADAPT protocol will be important in confirming its generalizability. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s44186-022-00075-4.
Project description:The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus was identified in China in 2019 as the causative agent of COVID-19, and quickly spread throughout the world, causing over 7 million deaths, of which 2 million occurred prior to the introduction of the first vaccine. In the following discussion, while recognising that complement is just one of many players in COVID-19, we focus on the relationship between complement and COVID-19 disease, with limited digression into directly-related areas such as the relationship between complement, kinin release, and coagulation. Prior to the 2019 COVID-19 outbreak, an important role for complement in coronavirus diseases had been established. Subsequently, multiple investigations of patients with COVID-19 confirmed that complement dysregulation is likely to be a major driver of disease pathology, in some, if not all, patients. These data fuelled evaluation of many complement-directed therapeutic agents in small patient cohorts, with claims of significant beneficial effect. As yet, these early results have not been reflected in larger clinical trials, posing questions such as who to treat, appropriate time to treat, duration of treatment, and optimal target for treatment. While significant control of the pandemic has been achieved through a global scientific and medical effort to comprehend the etiology of the disease, through extensive SARS-CoV-2 testing and quarantine measures, through vaccine development, and through improved therapy, possibly aided by attenuation of the dominant strains, it is not yet over. In this review, we summarise complement-relevant literature, emphasise its main conclusions, and formulate a hypothesis for complement involvement in COVID-19. Based on this we make suggestions as to how any future outbreak might be better managed in order to minimise impact on patients.
Project description:ContextInterprofessional education (IPE) aspires to enable collaborative practice. Current IPE offerings, although rapidly proliferating, lack evidence of efficacy and theoretical grounding.ObjectivesOur research aimed to explore the historical emergence of the field of IPE and to analyse the positioning of this academic field of inquiry. In particular, we sought to investigate the extent to which power and conflict - elements central to interprofessional care - figure in the IPE literature.MethodsWe used a combination of deductive and inductive automated coding and manual coding to explore the contents of 2191 articles in the IPE literature published between 1954 and 2013. Inductive coding focused on the presence and use of the sociological (rather than statistical) version of power, which refers to hierarchies and asymmetries among the professions. Articles found to be centrally about power were then analysed using content analysis.ResultsPublications on IPE have grown exponentially in the past decade. Deductive coding of identified articles showed an emphasis on students, learning, programmes and practice. Automated inductive coding of titles and abstracts identified 129 articles potentially about power, but manual coding found that only six articles put power and conflict at the centre. Content analysis of these six articles revealed that two provided tentative explorations of power dynamics, one skirted around this issue, and three explicitly theorised and integrated power and conflict.ConclusionsThe lack of attention to power and conflict in the IPE literature suggests that many educators do not foreground these issues. Education programmes are expected to transform individuals into effective collaborators, without heed to structural, organisational and institutional factors. In so doing, current constructions of IPE veil the problems that IPE attempts to solve.
Project description:Qualitative inquiry is increasingly popular in health professions education, and there has been a move to solidify processes of analysis to demystify the practice and increase rigour. Whilst important, being bound too heavily by methodological processes potentially represses the imaginative creativity of qualitative expression and interpretation-traditional cornerstones of the approach. Rigid adherence to analytic steps risks leaving no time or space for moments of 'wonder' or emotional responses which facilitate rich engagement. Poetic inquiry, defined as research which uses poetry 'as, in, [or] for inquiry', offers ways to encourage creativity and deep engagement with qualitative data within health professions education. Poetic inquiry attends carefully to participant language, can deepen researcher reflexivity, may increase the emotive impact of research, and promotes an efficiency of qualitative expression through the use of 'razor sharp' language. This A Qualitative Space paper introduces the approach by outlining how it may be applied to inquiry within health professions education. Approaches to engaging with poetic inquiry are discussed and illustrated using examples from the field's scholarship. Finally, recommendations for interested researchers on how to engage with poetic inquiry are made, including suggestions as to how to poetize existing qualitative research practices.
Project description:Purpose To develop a standardized method to improve readability of orthopaedic patient education materials (PEMs) without diluting their critical content by reducing the use of complex words (≥3 syllables) and shortening sentence length to ≤15 words. Methods OrthoInfo, a patient education website developed by the Academy of American Orthopedic Surgeons, was queried for PEMs relevant to the care of athletic injuries of the knee. Inclusion criteria were PEMs that were unique, pertained to topics of knee pathology in sports medicine, and written in a prose format. Exclusion criteria were information presented in video or slideshow format, or topics not pertaining to knee pathology in sports medicine. Readability of PEMs was evaluated using 7 unique readability formulas before and after applying a standardized method to improve readability while preserving critical content (reducing the use of ≥3 syllable words and ensuring sentence length is ≤15 words). Paired samples t-tests were conducted to assess the relationship between reading levels of the original PEMs and reading level of edited PEMs. Results Reading levels differed significantly between the 22 original PEMs and edited PEMs across all 7 readability formulas (P < .01). Mean Flesch Kincaid Grade Level of original PEMs (9.8 ± 1.4) was significantly increased compared to that of edited PEMs (6.4 ± 1.1) (P = 1.9 × 10–13). 4.0% of original PEMs met National Institutes of Health recommendations of a sixth-grade reading level compared with 48.0% of modified PEMs. Conclusions A standardized method that reduces the use of ≥3 syllable words and ensures sentence length is ≤15 words significantly reduces the reading-grade level of PEMs for sports-related knee injuries. Orthopaedic organizations and institutions should apply this simple standardized method when creating PEMs to enhance health literacy. Clinical Relevance The readability of PEMs is important when communicating technical material to patients. While many studies have suggested strategies to improve the readability of PEMs, literature describing the benefit of these proposed changes is scarce. The information from this study details a simple standardized method to use when creating PEMs that may enhance health literacy and improve patient outcomes.