The incidence of eating disorders appears to be increasing, with the dental practitioner potentially being the first healthcare worker to make a diagnosis, due to the characteristic dental signs of tooth substance loss. It is therefore important that members of the dental team are aware of the dental sequelae of anorexia and bulimia and are able to offer advice and treatment to sufferers.

IntroductionThe science of patient safety demonstrates that good communication is essential for effective interprofessional collaboration.MethodsWe created a low-stakes, formative assessment with which medical students, pharmacy students, and nursing students could practice several of the Interprofessional Education Collaborative competencies. We aimed to enable students to practice collaborative care, respect for other disciplines, and shared accountability. Senior students from medicine, nursing, and pharmacy worked in teams to disclose a medical error to a standardized patient. The activity began with an icebreaker exercise wherein students learned about each other. Next, each team planned a strategy for error disclosure and collaboratively disclosed the error. Standardized patients evaluated the team's performance. Subsequently, students regrouped for a debriefing. The participating institutions administered a survey to their students.ResultsIn total, 1,151 students participated: 464 fourth-year students from the University of Houston College of Pharmacy, 450 third- and fourth-year students from Baylor College of Medicine, and 237 fourth-year students from Texas Woman's University Nelda C. Stark College of Nursing, all in Houston, Texas. Postsession survey data showed that students thought they achieved the relevant competencies. Students’ understanding of the perspectives of the other two disciplines improved. Students found the simulation encounter and debriefing effective in helping them consider the contributions of other disciplines to patient care.DiscussionThis interprofessional standardized patient activity enabled collaborative problem solving. The debriefing discussion broadened students’ understanding of the expertise of the other disciplines and promoted shared accountability. Students found this activity engaging and effective.

Objectives: Because psychiatry residents have important roles as teachers and significant opportunities to contribute to medical student education, we set out to: identify all randomized control trials (RCT) for residents' teaching skills programs in psychiatry and to identify the efficacy of those interventions for improving teaching skills; identify the strengths and weaknesses of the available studies across medical disciplines; and identify currently available methods for enhancing residents' teaching skills for residents training in psychiatry. Methods: The published English-language literature was searched using PubMed, Social Sciences Index, and PsycINFO databases, with key search words including: residents, teaching skills, residents as teachers, psychiatry, and assessments. Both RCT and controlled, nonrandomized trials of residents' teaching programs directed to enhance residents' teaching skills were selected and critically appraised. Results: Of 13 trials identified and reviewed, most included residents in internal medicine. Only one included psychiatry residents and assessed their ability to teach interviewing skills to medical students. Along with other studies, this study demonstrated improvement in residents' teaching skills. Overall, interventions and outcome measures were heterogeneous while the quality of methodologies varied. Five studies were of higher quality, representing examples of quality educational research. Several described group differences, blinding, good follow-up, and use of valid, reliable tools. Conclusions: Only one trial exists that incorporated psychiatry residents. Significant opportunity to advance educational research in this field exists. Psychiatry residency program directors should incorporate high-quality methodologies and can benefit from the findings of trials in other disciplines.

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Calls for curricular reform in medical schools and enhanced integration of basic and clinical science have resulted in a shift toward preclerkship curricula that enhance the clinical relevance of foundational science instruction and provide students with earlier immersion in the clinical environment. These reforms have resulted in shortened preclerkship curricula, yet the promise of integrated basic science education into clerkships has not been sufficiently realized because of barriers such as the nature of clinical practice, time constraints, and limited faculty knowledge. As personalized medicine requires that physicians have a more nuanced understanding of basic science, this is cause for alarm. To address this problem, several schools have developed instructional and assessment strategies to better integrate basic science into the clinical curriculum. In this article, faculty and deans from 11 U.S. medical schools discuss the strategies they implemented and the lessons they learned to provide guidance to other schools seeking to enhance basic science education during clerkships. The strategies include program-level interventions (e.g., longitudinal sessions dedicated to basic science during clerkships, weeks of lessons dedicated to basic science interspersed in clerkships), clerkship-level interventions (e.g., case-based learning with online modules, multidisciplinary clerkship dedicated to applied science), bedside-level interventions (e.g., basic science teaching scripts, self-directed learning), and changes to formative and summative assessments (e.g., spaced repetition/leveraging test-enhanced learning, developing customized examinations). The authors discovered that: interventions were more successful when buy-in from faculty and students was considered, central oversight by curricular committees collaborating with faculty was key, and some integration efforts may require schools to provide significant resources. All schools administered the United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 1 exam to students after clerkship, with positive outcomes. The authors have demonstrated that it is feasible to incorporate basic science into clinical clerkships, but certain challenges remain.