A departmental experience in promoting oral and poster presentations

BACKGROUND

Residency programs must demonstrate resident and faculty involvement in scholarly activity. One acceptable method is delivering presentations at scientific meetings.

DESCRIPTION

A prospective database and retrospective search of all prior presentations.

EVALUATION

Prior to 1997, residents made less than 5 presentations per year. After inception, they made an average of 35, increasing from 12 in 1998 to 80 in 2006; 180 submissions were presented 335 times (1.9 presentations per unique work). The majority were based on case reports, whereas 11% were research. In the last 2 years, 36% were accepted as oral presentations, the remaining as posters. Total program cost for 2006 was $39,184 ($490 per presentation).

CONCLUSION

The program has succeeded in increasing scholarly activity for faculty and residents at an acceptable cost. Most secondary goals were also met, including increasing the number of departmental publications.

Tobacco industry use of judicial seminars to influence rulings in products liability litigation

OBJECTIVES

This paper examines the tobacco industry's efforts to influence litigation by sponsoring judicial seminars.

METHODS

Thousands of internal tobacco documents were examined, including memos, reports, presentations, and newsletters. Connections to outside organisations were corroborated by examining tobacco industry financial records, budgets, and letters pledging funds. Facts about outside organisations were triangulated through examining their websites and publicly-filed financial records, and verifying facts through their representatives' statements in newspaper and law review articles.

RESULTS

There are direct financial ties between the tobacco industry and groups that organise judicial seminars in an effort to influence jurisprudence, and judges who attend these seminars may be breaching judicial ethics either by not inquiring about the source of funding or by ignoring funding by potential litigants.

CONCLUSIONS

The tobacco industry's attempts to clandestinely influence judges' decisions in cases to which they are a party endangers the integrity of the judiciary.

Of doctor conventions and drug companies

Pharmaceutical companies provide the majority of financial support for staging the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) Annual Scientific Assembly. In return they are allowed to dominate the physical and mental environment. The assembly is opulent and entertaining, but undoubtedly much of the expense is passed to the health care consumer in the form of high-priced brand-name prescription drugs. Additionally, public perception of such spectacles threatens the image that the AAFP has been careful to nurture--that family physicians are the ultimate advocates for our patients and, by extension, the health care-consuming public. Family physicians and our representative AAFP must recognize our complicity with and vulnerability to media forces. We must further adjust our role, not only to avoid the appearance of impropriety but to rededicate ourselves to our science, our intellectual basis, and ultimately our patients.

[Quality of surgical continuing education in Germany]

BACKGROUND

One of the reasons for young doctors to leave the clinical work to go abroad or into non-clinical fields is insufficient quality of training under bad circumstances. Aim of the study was to evaluate the surgical training in Germany from the viewpoint of the residents.

METHODS

A questionnaire was prepared by residents and consultants and approved by the German surgical societies (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Chirurgie und Berufsverband der Deutschen Chirurgen). It was sent to surgical residents between June 2003 and June 2004, published in "Der Chirurg BDC" and distributed among residents taking part in courses conducted by the BDC. It could be answered anonymously by email, mail or online.

RESULTS

The questionnaire was sent back by 584 surgical residents (about 30 % of all). 58 % of the residents declared that they finished the training in the intended time (6 years). Rotation-systems as part of a structured residency program existed for 43 %. Standard surgical procedures were discussed or explained before the procedure in only 46 %. 61 % of the residents were not satisfied with the teaching assistance by their clinical teachers in the OR. Only 33 % had regular talks with the Chief about their progress in surgical training. 18 % of residents felt, that the hospital is interested in their progress in training. Indication-conferences took place in 52 % and mortality-conferences in only 20 % of programs. Regular seminars on recent issues took place in 62 %, and 61 % of residents did not get financial support to attend congresses. 36 % of residents had to use their holidays to attend congresses.

CONCLUSIONS

Surgical training structures are not well established in about 50 % of the training hospitals from where we got answers to our survey. The training potential of daily surgical work is not used appropriately. It is therefore imperative to develop guidelines for surgical training, the use of log-books and rotation-programs.

Time for renewal

During hard economic times, college health professionals must urge their supervisors and administrators to help them maintain or find new funding so that they can attend regional and national conferences of the American College Health Association. In this viewpoint, a nurse from a small college shares the various sources of funding she discovered to enable her to attend regional and national conference of the American College Health Association that saved her from burnout and also motivated her to strive for changes through setting goals.