A novel patient-centered approach was used to deliver ethics curriculum to medical students. Two medical school clinicians designed a telemedicine session linking their facilities (across 2 continents). The session, Exploring the Patient Experience Through Telemedicine: Dialysis and End-Stage Renal Disease, allowed second-year medical students to explore various parameters of quality of life experienced by dialysis patients. A panel of 4 medical students interviewed a dialysis patient via Skype video connection between the medical school and the hospital's dialysis unit. Interview questions were adapted from the Kidney Disease Quality of Life instrument. During the live video-streamed interview, the remaining 23 second-year medical students observed the session. Afterward, the 23 were offered a voluntary anonymous online feedback survey (15 responded). The 4 panelists submitted narrative responses to 2 open-ended questions about their experience. All 15 responding students "Strongly agreed" or "Agreed" that the session was an aid to their professionalism skills and behaviors; 14 of 15 "Strongly agreed" or "Agreed" that telemedicine technology contributed to their understanding of the topic; 12 of 15 "Strongly agreed" that the session improved their understanding of the psychosocial burdens of dialysis, quality of life, and human suffering, and increased their empathy toward patients; and 12 of 15 "Strongly agreed" or "Agreed" that the session encouraged reflective thinking and was an aid to improving their communication skills. Telemedicine can be an effective and feasible method to deliver an ethics curriculum with a patient-centered approach. Additionally, the cross-cultural experience exposes students to additional contextual features of medicine.

BackgroundReporting the scoring details of continuous outcome measures in randomized trials allows readers to interpret the size of any effect of the intervention. This study aimed to determine, in a sample of randomized trials: 1) the completeness of reporting of scoring details for continuous outcome measures, and 2) whether trial authors comment on the clinical significance of statistically significant trial results.MethodsA descriptive analysis of randomized trials of non-pharmacological interventions published during 2009 in the six leading general medical journals (n = 138), and which used at least one continuous outcome measure (n = 85). From each trial report, two authors independently extracted the following information about each continuous outcome measure: the reporting of its scoring details, presentation of its results, and the reporting and justification of the clinical significance of the results.ResultsAcross the 84 trials, we identified 336 continuous outcome measures. A total of 146 (44%) were published measures, 12 (4%) were adapted from published measures, 5 (1%) were developed for the trial, and 173 (51%) were ‘conventional measures’ for which scoring details are not necessary (such as weight). For 57 (35%) of the 163 non-conventional outcome measures no scoring details or reference to the outcome measure were provided in the trial report. Of the 159 outcome measures with a statistically significant result, clinical significance was not mentioned for 81 (51%) and was reported without any elaboration or justification for 39 (25%) of them.ConclusionsScoring details of continuous outcome measures used in this sample of randomized trials of non-pharmacological interventions were incompletely reported, which hampers interpretation of a trial’s results. Complete reporting of scoring details is important when considering the clinical significance of the results. When deciding about an intervention, having this information may help clinicians in their conversations with patients about the possible benefits and harms, and their size, of the intervention.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1745-6215-15-362) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.