The full disclosure educational module significantly improved students' perceived confidence in admitting medical errors and their confidence in understanding and performing the full disclosure of a medical error.

No abstract

A patient safety curriculum, developed by a group of experts for an undergraduate medical education population, was successfully developed over a two-year period of time. Future meetings of the Telluride Roundtable group have centered on evaluation and refinement of these curricular elements as pilots occur in a number of medical schools, and new curricular ideas continue to be developed. Continued interprofessional dialogue and collaborative research will enable the development and implementation of a standardized longitudinal patient safety student curriculum.

Rural elderly patients receive health services primarily in the outpatient setting, with their primary care provider often serving as their only point of contact with the health care system. Little is known however about the attitudes of physicians, and more specifically attitudes of those practicing in rural locations, toward differing age groups of the elderly. The current study was undertaken to examine the perceptions and attitudes of rural Florida physicians who routinely provide care for the elderly. We utilized an existing and validated survey instrument designed to measure the perceptions and attitudes of health professionals toward 3 different cohorts of elderly people: the elderly population in general, the elderly population older than 85 years, and the nursing home population. The study provides evidence that physicians who routinely provide care for the elderly in rural Florida demonstrate ageist perceptions, especially against those older than 85 years and the nursing home population. The trends identified are important because they may directly influence the quality of care that this population receives.

Improving medical practice begins with the improvement of medical education. In this process, most academic medical faculty assume the dual roles of both teacher and researcher, often without intending to or realizing that they are. With the increased tightening of regulation and supervision of biomedical research in the United States, academic medical institutions and their individual faculty face the daunting regulatory compliance problems that are traditionally associated with clinical and bench research projects. In 2000, as part of a new geriatrics curriculum initiative, one medical school (not the authors' present institution) developed a mentor program that was designed to positively influence students' attitudes about aging. Despite the attempts of faculty to design the curriculum and evaluation process to conform to human subjects regulations, formal allegations of research misconduct were brought against the faculty who were in charge of the curriculum. Even though research that shows that 70% of alleged research misconduct charges result in exoneration, an accusation of misconduct can have serious consequences for faculty including suspension of their project, undergoing an intensive investigation, and potentially making it impossible for the faculty member or institution to apply for future federally supported research funds. The authors wrote this article to serve as a wake-up call for medical educators to become intimately familiar with their own institution's institutional review board process and be proactive in educating themselves and their peers regarding research in medical education.