Objectives: The authors performed a prospective, double-blinded, randomized trial with emergency department (ED) patients requiring procedural sedation and analgesia (PSA) for repair of deep traumatic lacerations and reduction of bone fractures, to compare the ketamine ⁄ propofol (ketofol) combination with the midazolam ⁄ fentanyl (MF) combination.Methods: Sixty-two patients scheduled for PSA who presented between January 2009 and June 2009 were enrolled prospectively. Thirty-one were randomly assigned to the ketofol group, and 31 were assigned to the MF group.Results: The median starting doses were 0.75 mg ⁄ kg of both ketamine and propofol (interquartile range [IQR] = 0.75 to 1.5 mg ⁄ kg), 0.04 mg ⁄ kg midazolam (IQR = 0.04 to 0.06 mg ⁄ kg), and 2 lg ⁄ kg fentanyl (IQR = 2 to 3 lg ⁄ kg). There were no significant differences in sedation time between the groups. There were no differences in physician satisfaction (p = 0.065). Perceived pain in the ketofol group, as measured by the Visual Analog Scale (VAS), was significantly lower than in the MF group (median ketofol = 0, IQR = 0-1 vs. median MF = 3, IQR = 1-6; p < 0.001). Only one patient in each group required bag-mask ventilation, and neither of them were intubated.
Conclusions:The ketamine ⁄ propofol combination provides adequate sedation and analgesia for painful procedures and appears to be a safe and useful technique in the ED.
The increased number of medical students and different faculties' responsibilities such as doing educational, research, and health services duties assessing medical student communication skills is a complex issue. The results of our study showed that trained SPs can be used as a valid tool to assess medical students' communication skills, which is also more cost effective and reduces work load of medical faculties.
AimThe purpose of this study is to evaluate the association of the pre-internship Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in final year medical students with comprehensive written examinations.Subjects and materialAll medical students of October 2004 admission who took part in the October 2010 National Comprehensive Pre-internship Examination (NCPE) and pre-internship OSCE were included in the study (n=130). OSCE and NCPE scores and medical grade point average (GPA) were collected.ResultsGPA was highly correlated with NCPE (r=0.76 and P<0.001) and moderately with OSCE (r=0.68 and P<0.001). Similarly a moderate correlation was observed between NCPE and OSCE scores(r=0.6 and P<0.001).Linear stepwise regression shows r
2 of a model applying GPA as predictor of OSCE score is 0.46 (β=0.68 and P<0.001), while addition of gender to the model increases r
2 to 0.59 (β=0.61 and 0.36, for GPA and male gender, respectively and P<0.001). Logistic forward regression models shows male gender and GPA are the only dependent predictors of high score in OSCE. OR of GPA and male gender for high OSCE score are 4.89 (95% CI=2.37–10.06) and 6.95 (95% CI=2.00–24.21), respectively (P<0.001).DiscussionOur findings indicate OSCE and examination which mainly evaluate knowledge, judged by GPA and NCPE are moderately to highly correlated. Our results illustrate the interwoven nature of knowledge and clinical skills. In other words, certain level of knowledge is crucial for appropriate clinical performance. Our findings suggest neither OSCE nor written forms of assessments can replace each other. They are complimentary and should also be combined by other evaluations to cover all attributes of clinical competence efficiently.
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