Medical student homophobia, if left unchallenged, will hinder care provided to homosexual patients. Physician homophobia may disallow a healthy doctor-patient relationship and may cause a decrease in patients' ability to disclose sensitive issues.

Second year medical students at a large midwestern university were surveyed about their attitudes regarding AIDS. Results indicated: (1) students with homosexual and/or HIV-positive friends were significantly more tolerant toward AIDS patients, (2) over half the students believed that treating AIDS patients may be hazardous and that their education had not prepared them to treat these patients safely, (3) one-third believed they had the right to refuse to treat AIDS patients, and (4) AIDS-phobia was significantly associated with homophobia. These data suggest that medical educators may need to help students overcome AIDS-phobia before some students will be able to incorporate instruction about AIDS since AIDS-phobia may inhibit this learning. Didactic instruction must be coupled with modeling by educators of non-prejudicial attitudes and strict adherence to medical professionalism.

Student engagement refers to a broad range of activities where students participate in management, education, research, and community activities within their institutions. It is a mutually beneficial collaborative approach between students and their institutions. This article provides practical advice for the implementation or further development of student engagement at medical, dental, and veterinary schools. The tips provided are based on the experiences of a group of universities recently recognized for best practice in student engagement, and are supported by evidence from the literature. The tips cover overarching themes which include the creation of an institutional culture and formal framework for student engagement, and maximize communication routes between students with peers and faculty. Tips are for specific areas of active student engagement, covering curriculum design and development, peer teaching, governance processes, research activities, peer support programs, and interaction with the local community.

Second-year medical students performed a head-to-toe screening physical examination on trained patient instructors (PIs) as a high-stakes examination before beginning clinical clerkships. PIs completed a 138-item checklist and instructed the students in the proper performance of any incorrectly executed or omitted items. To assess the accuracy of the PI ratings, 'monitor' PIs watching the encounter by video completed checklists for 11 retests of failed students in 2001 and for 28 randomly selected encounters in 2002. Checklist-level discrepancies measured by mean absolute checklist difference were 8% in 2001 and 9% in 2002. Case-level mean difference between raters in 2002 was -2.9%. The inter-rater reliability for a single rater, estimated by the intra-class correlation coefficient for total encounter scores, was 0.95. The assessment and feedback were well received by the students. The Head-to-Toe examination provides a reliable assessment of a student's ability to carry out a complete screening physical examination. Patient instructors can be trained to acceptable accuracy and reliability despite the length and complexity of the exercise, and can provide effective feedback and teaching targeted to individual student deficiencies.

The diagnosis of depression has been viewed as an important factor in the treatment response for those who have alcohol and other drug dependence. The objective of the study was to examine the prevalence of a lifetime history of major depression in inpatients with a substance use disorder in addictions treatment. An evaluation study of 6,355 patients was conducted in inpatient and outpatient addictions treatment programs from 41 sites. Subjects were required to have a substance use disorder and to be evaluated for a lifetime diagnosis of major depression according to DSM-III-R criteria. The rate of a lifetime diagnosis of major depression was 43.7%. The most common diagnosis was alcohol dependence, followed by cocaine dependence, and cannabis dependence). Depression was associated in significantly greater numbers with diagnoses involving drugs other than alcohol, in females greater than in males, with number and frequency of use, and in inpatient programs more than outpatient programs. The rates for continuous abstinence at one year did not differ between those with and without a lifetime history of depression.