Undergraduate biochemistry laboratory courses often do not provide students with an authentic research experience, particularly when the express purpose of the laboratory is purely instructional. However, an instructional laboratory course that is inquiry‐ and research‐based could simultaneously impart scientific knowledge and foster a student's research expertise and confidence. We have developed a year‐long undergraduate biochemistry laboratory curriculum wherein students determine, via experiment and computation, the function of a protein of known three‐dimensional structure. The first half of the course is inquiry‐based and modular in design; students learn general biochemical techniques while gaining preparation for research experiments in the second semester. Having learned standard biochemical methods in the first semester, students independently pursue their own (original) research projects in the second semester. This new curriculum has yielded an improvement in student performance and confidence as assessed by various metrics. To disseminate teaching resources to students and instructors alike, a freely accessible Biochemistry Laboratory Education resource is available at http://biochemlab.org. © 2015 The Authors Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 43(4):245–262, 2015.

Effective approaches to teaching attitudes, knowledge, and skills to resident physicians in primary care that can be implemented in any residency program are needed. We examined the feasibility and impact of a single palliative care residency curriculum, including a clinical rotation with a hospice program, across 5 cohorts of residents in 7 divergent primary care residency programs (both family medicine and internal medicine). The didactic content was drawn from the national Education for Physicians on End-of-Life Care Project. A total of 448 residents completed the curriculum. A large effect size was seen in measures of knowledge change (*Cohen d = .89) when compared to a national sample of primary care residency programs. Additionally, measures of confidence to perform palliative care skills and ethical concerns also improved significantly ( P < .001). A frequent comment is wishing the rest of medicine were like that experienced in the hospice setting. In a separate, ancillary evaluation, the average length of stay of patients enrolled in hospice care was 18.5 days longer for the alumni of this program when compared to physicians referring for hospice care who hadn't experienced the curriculum.

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Using the proper greeting may be important to help establish rapport between health care providers and their patients. It may be particularly useful for family medicine physicians working in a military medical facility, where military rank and traditions are important. A total of 259 anonymous surveys were collected from patients treated at a military family medicine clinic. Most of the patients who completed the survey preferred to shake hands with their provider, be greeted using only their first name, and preferred that the provider introduce themselves using their last name only. Active duty patients were more likely than civilians to prefer a handshake (odds ratio [OR] 3.05, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.46-6.39) and officers were more likely to prefer a handshake compared to enlisted service members (OR 3.29; 95% CI 1.18-9.20). Respondents who were older were more likely to prefer a formal introduction by their provider compared to respondents under 35 years old (OR 2.92, 95% CI 1.35-6.31). Although most patients in this facility expressed a preference for how they would like to be greeted, providers are still encouraged to ask their patients how they would prefer to be addressed.