Objective To assess the effect of ethnicity on student performance in stations assessing communication skills within an objective structured clinical examination. Design Quantitative and qualitative study. Setting A final UK clinical examination consisting of a two day objective structured clinical examination with 22 stations. Participants 82 students from ethnic minorities and 97 white students.
Main outcome measures Mean scores for stations (quantitative) and observations made using discourse analysis on selected communication stations (qualitative).Results Mean performance of students from ethnic minorities was significantly lower than that of white students for stations assessing communication skills on days 1
If history-taking long cases are observed, three-and-a-half hours of testing time using 10 unstandardized patients would produce a reliable test. Long cases therefore are, in terms of reliability, no worse and no better than OSCEs in assessing clinical competence.
Detailed discourse analysis sheds light on patterns of communicative style and provides an analytic language for students to raise awareness of their own communication. This challenges standard approaches to teaching communication and shows the value of using summative assessments in formative ways.
Although the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors has published clear guidance on the authorship of scientific papers, short-term contract research workers, who perform much of the research that is reported in the biomedical literature, are often at a disadvantage in terms of recognition, reward and career progression. This article identifies several professional, ethical and operational issues associated with the assignment of authorship, describes how a university department of primary care set about identifying and responding to the concerns of its contract research staff on authorship and describes a set of guidelines that were produced to deal with the ethical and professional issues raised. These guidelines include directions on how authorship should be negotiated and allocated and how short-term researchers can begin to develop as authors. They also deal with the structures required to support an equitable system, which deals with the needs of short-term researchers in ways that are realistic in the increasingly competitive world of research funding and publication, and may offer a model for more formal guidelines that could form part of institutional research policy.
A new process has been developed for in-line compounding and injection molding in a single operation. Selected short-to long-fiber-reinforced thermoplastic mixtures are created and fed directly into the injection molding barrel while still hot. Compositions containing glass fibers of 3-12 mm in length have been molded successfully on a 230-ton injection press. The new processing system is adaptable to the existing injection molding machines. This novel technology permits molded articles to be produced at cost levels that are less expensive than those incurred when molding parts from the conventional long-and short-fiber-reinforced thermoplastic compounded pellets.
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