The Penn State College of Medicine Professionalism Questionnaire is one of the first valid and reliable surveys of attitudes among medical students, residents, and faculty that reflects seven elements of professionalism.

Empowerment of faculty is essential for academic success. The Junior Faculty Development Program (JFDP), sponsored by the Office of Professional Development of the Penn State College of Medicine, was established in 2003 with the goal of promoting the development and advancement of junior faculty so they can achieve success in their academic careers. The program consists of two components: a curriculum in research, education, clinical practice, and career development, and an individual project completed under the guidance of a senior faculty mentor. The curriculum provides faculty with knowledge, skills, and resources. Mentoring provides relationships and support. Together, these elements combine to empower junior faculty to better manage their careers. The effectiveness of the program has been demonstrated by several measures: participants evaluated the program highly, demonstrated increases in their perceptions of their own abilities, and completed tasks important to the advancement of their careers. Participants stated they were better prepared to advance their academic careers and that the individual projects would contribute to their career advancement. On the basis of this experience, the authors suggest that faculty development programs should empower faculty so that they can more effectively chart a successful career in academic medicine. This report describes an empowerment model, and the design, implementation, and evaluation of the Junior Faculty Development Program in 2003-04 and 2004-05. The authors offer this program as a model for the benefit of other institutions and for one of their most valuable assets: junior faculty.

Background:The doctor-patient relationship has been eroded by many factors. Would e-mail enhance communication and address some of the barriers inherent to our medical practices?Methods: Of our study population, 4 physicians offered e-mail communication to participating patients and 4 did not. Both patients and physicians completed questionnaires regarding satisfaction, perceived quality, convenience, and promptness of the communication.Results: Patient satisfaction significantly increased in the e-mail group compared with the control group in the areas of convenience (P < .0001) and the amount of time spent contacting their physician (P < .0001). Physician satisfaction in the e-mail group increased regarding convenience, amount of time spent on messages, and volume of messages. The response time was longer with e-mail. When asked if patients should be able to e-mail their physicians, most patients in the e-mail group and all but 2 of the physicians in the non-e-mail group responded "yes."Conclusion: E-mail communication was found to be a more convenient form of communication. Satisfaction by both patients and physicians improved in the e-mail group. The volume of messages and the time spent answering messages for the e-mail group physicians was not increased. E-mail has the potential to improve the doctor-patient relationship as a result of better communication.

[reaction: see text] The free-radical hydrostannation of 1 with Ph(3)SnH and catalytic Et(3)B in PhMe has been mechanistically probed. At high Ph(3)SnH concentrations, the O-directed hydrostannation pathway dominates, and 2 is formed with good selectivity (ca. 11.1:1). Substantially lower stannane/substrate concentrations increase the amount of tandem 5-exo-trig cyclization product 3 that is observed.

Bacterial meroterpenoids constitute an important class of natural products with diverse biological properties and therapeutic potential. The biosynthetic logic for their production is unknown and defies explanation via classical biochemical paradigms. A large subgroup of naphthoquinone-based meroterpenoids exhibits a substitution pattern of the polyketide-derived aromatic core that seemingly contradicts the established reactivity pattern of polyketide phenol nucleophiles and terpene diphosphate electrophiles. We report the discovery of a hitherto unprecedented enzyme-promoted α-hydroxyketone rearrangement catalysed by vanadium-dependent haloperoxidases to account for these discrepancies in the merochlorin and napyradiomycin class of meroterpenoid antibiotics, and we demonstrate that the α-hydroxyketone rearrangement is potentially a conserved biosynthetic reaction in this molecular class. The biosynthetic α-hydroxyketone rearrangement was applied in a concise total synthesis of naphthomevalin, a prominent member of the napyradiomycin meroterpenes, and sheds further light on the mechanism of this unifying enzymatic transformation.