Universities increasingly record lectures and make them available online for students. Though the technology to record these lectures is now solidly implemented and embed-ded in many institutions, the impact of the usage of recorded lectures on exam perfor-mance is not clear. The purpose of the current study is to address the use of recorded lectures in an authentic setting by focusing on the actual time spent on the usage of recorded lectures and the impact on lecture attendance and exam performance. The participants were 396 first-year university psychology students attending a mandatory course on biological psychology. During the course, student attendance to face-to-face lectures was registered and the viewing of the recordings monitored. Results revealed that a large amount of students used the recorded lectures as a substitute for lecture attendance. The group who uses recorded lectures as a supplement when developing a knowledge base score significantly higher on the assessment. When assessing higher order thinking skills, no significant differences were found between using recording lectures and attending lectures. This can be partly explained by relatively low predictive value either form of lectures have on exam performance.

The A&E department questionnaire is a valid and reliable questionnaire to assess patients' experiences with the A&E. The discriminative power of six summary scores offers a reliable comparison of healthcare performance between A&Es to increase patient centredness and quality of care.

Objectives Undergraduate medical teaching in occupational health (OH) is a challenge in universities around the world. Case-based e-learning with an attractive clinical context could improve the attitude of medical students towards OH. The study question is whether case-based e-learning for medical students is more effective in improving knowledge, satisfaction and a positive attitude towards OH than non-case-based textbook learning. Methods Participants, 141 second year medical students, were randomised to either case-based e-learning or text-based learning. Outcome measures were knowledge, satisfaction and attitude towards OH, measured at baseline, directly after the intervention, after 1 week and at 3-month follow-up. Results Of the 141 participants, 130 (92%) completed the questionnaires at short-term follow-up and 41 (29%) at 3-month follow-up. At short-term follow-up, intervention and control groups did not show a significant difference in knowledge nor satisfaction but attitude towards OH was significantly more negative in the intervention group (F¼4.041, p¼0.047). At 3-month follow-up, there were no significant differences between intervention and control groups for knowledge, satisfaction and attitude. Conclusions We found a significant decrease in favourable attitude during the internship in the experimental group compared with the control group. There were no significant differences in knowledge or satisfaction between case-based e-learning and textbased learning. The attitude towards OH should be further investigated as an outcome of educational programmes.

BackgroundAssessment of patients’ views are essential to provide a patient-centred health service and to evaluating quality of care. As no standardized and validated system for measuring patients’ experiences in accident and emergency departments existed, we have developed the Consumer Quality index for the accident and emergency department (CQI A&E).MethodsQualitative research has been undertaken to determine the content validity of the CQI A&E. In order to assess psychometric characteristics an 84-item questionnaire was sent to 653 patients who had attended a large A&E in the Netherlands. Also, fifty importance questions were added to determine relevance of the questions and for future calculations of improvement scores. Exploratory factor analysis was applied to detect the domains of the questionnaire.ResultsSurvey data of 304 (47%) patients were used for the analysis. The first exploratory factor analysis resulted in three domains based on 13 items: ‘Attitude of the healthcare professionals’, ‘Environment and impression of the A&E’ and ‘Respect for and explanation to the patient’. The first two had an acceptable internal consistency. The second analysis, included 24 items grouped into 5 domains: ‘Attitude of the healthcare professionals’, ‘Information and explanation’, ‘Environment of the A&E’,’Leaving the A&E’ and ‘General information and rapidity of care’. All factors were internal consistent. According to the patients, the three most important aspects in healthcare performance in the A&E were: trust in the competence of the healthcare professionals, hygiene in the A&E and patients’ health care expectations. In general, the highest improvement scores concerned patient information.ConclusionsThe Consumer Quality index for the accident and emergency department measures patients’ experiences of A&E healthcare performance. Preliminary psychometric characteristics are sufficient to justify further research into reliability and validity.