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This article is a study based on MyStory, a project funded by the European Commission (under KA3 ICT) for the years 2011-2013, which was developed within an international partnership including institutions from Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia and the United Kingdom. The project created a collection of pieces of oral history, life stories narrated by senior citizens and gathered by young people. The project made good use of the educational value of these testimonials, which recreated the recent history of Europe from different angles and transferred their lessons to the young generation. Oral history as an authentic combination of history, culture and language stimulates discussion and encourages reflection. It is a powerful learning tool. When oral history is supported by ICT, it undoubtedly becomes one of the best ingredients to increase students' motivation to learn foreign languages. The method, flipped learning, highly encourages a student-centred learning environment, where the student is actively engaged and empowered to take the lead in the learning process. The flipped classroom asks teachers to give up their leading role in teaching in order to encourage students' contributions. It also asks students to change from passive to committed participants and assume the responsibility for their learning. The paper focuses on the method, which uses videos as the main channel of content delivery and which was applied to students studying at the School of Medicine, Iasi. It analyses the activities carried out during the flipped classes as well as the benefits highlighted by teachers and students (increased student-teacher interaction, increased student responsibility for their learning, increased student motivation and participation in classes). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is a study based on two projects (Grankit and MyStory) funded by the European Commission (under KA3 ICT/ GRUNDTVIG Multilateral) as they were implemented by Euroed Foundation, Iasi and having as one of the target groups a group of students studying at the School of Medicine in Iasi. Both projects start from a real phenomenon which Europe is facing nowadays: the World population is ageing. The economic effects of an ageing population are considerable. As a result, new policies, mechanisms and strategies need to be promoted and developed as these initiatives could ensure that ageing can be a creative and active experience for all, rather than a negative and frustrating one. Our societies have to promote solidarity between different groups of people, young and old. It is our belief that the more socially integrated the elderly are, the more our society will have to gain. The more grandparents participate in family life, the stronger family bonds are. This will positively affect the younger generation (grandchildren) who are more and more exposed to social problems. The article presents several opportunities explored by the projects as well as the strategies developed in order to help bridge the gap between different groups of people and different generations. The article analyses the intergenerational learning opportunities provided by the projects, highlighting the exchanges of ideas and experiences between generations. Ageing is perceived as positive and dynamic; both generations share the same joy of learning. The benefits for both generations in terms of participants' well-being, social integration, communication and ICT skills are also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the greatest difficulties that medical school in Sub-Saharan Africa are facing regarding increasing the number of their graduates is the acute lack of faculty. This paper will detail the medical school systems in 2 low income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa- Mali - and how they are managing to retain their faculty and students in country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal and economic position of universities was already enshrined in 1998, by Act no. 111/1998 Coll., on universities and on changes and amendments to other Acts (hereinafter referred to as the "University Education Act"). In recent years, the autonomy of universities has been strengthened. In connection with this change, the responsibility for funding has been increased as well as for the proper management of allocated funds. Public universities receive a significant portion of their funding for their activities from public sources, which are limited, and therefore it is important that these resources are used as efficiently as possible. An effective budgeting should be helpful in this process. Public universities might approach budgeting individually with regard to their specific needs. In particular, the allocation of funds to the lowest parts of public universities (departments and institutes) is an important issue in budgeting, since the educational, scientific and research activities of universities are based on them. This paper explores different types of methods which were tested for allocation of funds at public university in Faculty of Medicine, University of Ostrava. The aim of this work is to find such a combination of given parameters by which funds can be distributed among departments and institutes in the nearest possible amount allocated in the previous year. Based on those parameters the model for the distribution of funds will be compiled and improve according topical needs in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past five years, we have developed a multidisciplinary Master's degree program in Regenerative Medicine at our university. This program involves faculty and students spanning three academic units at our university - Biomedical Engineering, Biological Sciences, and Animal Science. The goals of our program are to prepare students for careers in regenerative medicine in both academia and industry by providing them with broad technical, critical thinking, and problem solving skills. This paper will discuss the evolution of the program and assessment of the program and our students. The Regenerative Medicine Program is a two-year program that consists of three components - one year of coursework, a nine-month internship, and a three-month Master's project. Coursework includes intensive lab work and focuses on principles of stem cell biology, cell culture, scaffold development, cell sodding, immunofluorescence, animal surgery and experimentation, therapeutic delivery, fluorescence microscopy, and image analysis. After completing all core coursework, students complete an intensive nine-month internship at one of our partner institutions, which include four academic and four industry partners. Once their internship is complete, students return for one last quarter at the university where they work on a research project and transfer knowledge from their internship back to the university. Throughout the program, students are given direct feedback on their performance. They are assessed by the instructor of each core course on areas such as motivation, independence, dependability, attitude, quality of work, etc. Students meet with a faculty mentor at least once a quarter to receive and discuss these assessments. When students leave to go on their 9-month internships, they maintain close contact with their faculty mentors, providing monthly progress reports as well as monthly mentoring sessions via phone. Internship supervisors provide performance evaluations every three months. All of these mentoring and feedback mechanisms increase student success and serve to improve performance. The program has undergone continuous assessment and improvement since the program began in 2009. Faculty and students in the program meet with an advisory board yearly, which is comprised of individuals from each of our partner institutions. The advisory board helps to assess the content of the courses, student preparation for the internship, student performance during the internship, program logistics, future directions of the field of regenerative medicine, and relevance of our coursework and program to ensure we continue to meet the needs of academia and industry. Results of these assessments will be presented in the final paper and demonstrate the success of the program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Serious games that simulate the subtle complexities of real life, pose a significant challenge in regards to requirements gathering. This case study involves a multi-player, inter-disciplinary medical game that simulates a hospital ward with medical scenarios based on the prescribed curriculum for junior doctors. Initially, both medical professionals and developers were focussed on finding ways to apply innovative 3D serious game technologies to build an eLearning environment for practical skills based medical training. The proposed system would allow an intern to play the role of an on-call doctor while employing AI and expert medical knowledge to simulate patients and supporting medical staff. However, a flaw in the basic premise of the project and the complexity of requirements forced unexpected changes during the development process. After the creation of text based documentation and flow charts for the medical diagnostic decision making processes, it became obvious that the subtly and complexities of the hospital ward and the interactions between patients and staff could not be adequately described through traditional documentation. To this end, the medical professionals developed video walkthroughs of real life scenarios reflecting good diagnostic practices and varying degrees of bad diagnostic practices. Along with the videos, PowerPoint slides were provided with key points, behaviours, and actions in the diagnostic and decision making process. Over an extended period of evolutionary requirements gathering, adaptive planning, prototyping, and testing, further inadequacies became evident. Email communications and videoconference proved to be inadequate. After extensive development, the only way to move forward was to organise face-to-face discussions between major stakeholders (a cross disciplinary team with educators, medical professionals, and IT professionals). At this point, a major flaw was identified and essential project requirements began to emerge. It was realised that teaching and learning outcomes had not driven the project. Rather, new technologies had been allowed to drive the project with learning outcomes constrained by the chosen technologies. It was further realised that the problem domain involved people and communications employing various mediums. It also became clear that the expert medical knowledge underlying the complexity of speech and behaviours required for the AI (such as a difficult patient or psychological issues) was far too complex to implement. This led to a movement away from AI driven avatars and a refocussing of the project on to human interactions and communication. This change in focus is currently being implemented through role-play of patients and health care professionals in a real time multi-player networked environment with the narrative set up through back stories. Testing was also refocussed on to clinical reasoning, problem solving, and communication skills with responses recorded in detail in communication logs for later evaluation and reflection. Features of the simulation are scheduled for testing at the Cairns Base Hospital using a group of 16 interns. A questionnaire will be administered before and after a play session involving a predefined medical scenario in a single player environment to help extract and refine the multi-player requirements for the current stage of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there has been a significant amount of research conducted on growth hormone in the field of medicine, very few studies have actually examined the experience from the vantage point of adults who were treated as children to obtain an understanding of the impact of growth hormone on those of short stature. Based on in-depth interviews with three women and two men, I explore the experiences of those who have firsthand knowledge of such treatment. What becomes clear in these narratives is that growth hormone serves as a both a normalising and a stigmatising force. More broadly, this study seeks to contribute to the growing body of research that looks at issues of physical appearance that allow for unequal treatment of individuals by society. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore if the different attributes Lareau (2002, 2003) notes as part of "concerted cultivation" and "the accomplishment of natural growth" are being utilized by premed intended continuing and first generation college students their first quarter at college. Using a survey of all premed first year students and interviews with a subsample of 44 of these students, we find multiple examples of differences between continuing and first generation college students in terms of the involvement of their parents in their college life, their use of language, and their interventions in the practices of the institution. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding of the dramatic shifts in authority experienced by the U.S. medical profession in the nineteenth century is limited by arguments that appeal solely to efficacy of treatment or macro cultural causes (i.e. the anti-intellectual Jacksonian Era and later the rise of the expertise-friendly Progressive Era). This paper reorients the analysis toward cultural practice to illuminate the way in which epistemic authority - recognition as a legitimate knower - is contested and captured. Through the case study of legislative struggles in nineteenth century medicine, I examine the rhetoric employed by Homeopathists and orthodox practitioners, and the different epistemologies of scientific medicine underlying these rhetorics. By embedding this analysis within the institutional culture of the New York State legislature, I argue that the Homeopaths' success can be attributed to the resonance that its public vision of science had in the legislatures. This public epistemology is manifest in their rhetorical appeal to transparent statistical knowledge. Contests over epistemic authority are thus heavily embedded within institutional cultures of knowing; to be successful, actors' rhetoric must conform to the relevant audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing recognition of the need to incorporate social science into medical practice. While medical school is the logical starting point for addressing that need, medical schools have been reticent to tamper with their curricula, which they perceive as having no room for any real integration of social science. Where some medical schools have taken such initiatives, social science courses have remained peripheral. We assert that the problems of efficiency and relevance can be addressed by working from a good theoretical understanding of the roles of art and science in medicine and by formulating a social science approach specifically to target the needs of clinical practice. In this paper, we address the ways in which social science is uniquely postured to solve split identity of medicine as art and science. This leads us to make specific suggestions about the ways in which social science can be (re)formulated to speak directly to the needs of clinical medicine and inform medical education. We describe a specific analytic framework from which medical students learn to generate their own social science insights and then use this same framework to suggest a way to structure an entire social science curriculum for medical schools. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Present-day physicians have generally been critiqued for not gathering a complete picture of their patient's health, but rather, for narrowly focusing on the medical aspects. In particular, obstetrician-gynecologists (ob-gyn's) are often unfavorably compared to midwives. With their scientific training, ob-gyn's are held to understand pregnancy and childbirth in mechanistic ways, in contrast to midwives who utilize a more holistic framework. In this paper, I argue that this dichotomous framework is too simplistic and that we need to examine variations in beliefs among ob-gyn's. Based on 40 in-depth interviews, I find that while they do rely on the scientific model, obstetrician-gynecologists - particularly female ob-gyn's - draw upon non-scientific training as a source of professional expertise. Many women ob-gyn's draw upon their experiences based upon their social statuses and roles as women in contemporary American society - or what I term "social empathy." I highlight two types of social empathy: that based on women's relationship to reproductive health matters and on women's balancing of work and family. I conclude by discussing the implications of my findings in regards to the education of physicians and the theories of the professions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we follow a cohort of students through medical school in order to examine the determinants of intentions to pursue careers in academic medicine or medical research.. Data collected by the American Association of Medical Colleges on 14219 freshman and senior medical students graduating in 2002 from 125 medical schools are analyzed. The key determinants of interest in research careers are perceived motivations to study medicine, having research experience during medical school (especially writing a thesis or submitting a paper for publication), and intended specialty. Women are as likely as men to intend to pursue an academic career but are less likely than men to express interest in conducting research. The implications of these findings for medical education are discussed in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the professionalization of medicine in the nineteenth century, legitimate knowledge of abortion was transferred to a new breed of physicians. Establishing pathology as the basis for medical intervention, these doctors constructed a medical discourse surrounding intentional abortion which pathologizes both the criminal method of abortion and the abortive woman herself. An historical analysis of obstetric/gynecological textbooks reveals this process and exposes its role in perpetuating medical control over abortion knowledge. In a contemporary context, the resulting disembodied womb of medical teaching reflects the split subjectivity required of women as gynecological patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore a cultural divide between sociology's study of professions during the 1970s and 1980s and the subsequent rise of a professionalism movement within organized medicine -- the latter somewhat ironically taking place just as sociology's analytic interest in medicine's professionalism prospects began to wain. In turn, sociology appears to be equally disinterested in medicine's current (and ongoing) efforts to reestablish its professionalism credentials. It is as if two ships have passed in the night -- twice over. To explore these two waves of inattention, we briefly review the rise of a sociology of professions, with a particular focus on the "great debate" of the 1970s and early 1980s between Eliot Freidson and his critics. Next, we more fully explore the subsequent rise of a professionalism movement within organized medicine -- largely because its evolution has taken place largely outside of sociological scrutiny. Here, we take particular interest in the relative (and longstanding) absence of a sociological perspective within medicine's emerging discourse on professionalism, and how recent twists in this discourse may well signal a shift within medicine from an almost exclusive focus on motives (e.g., the call to physicians to rediscover their professional roots) to the recognition of how various structural conditions facing professions, including public policy, payment structures, and different organizational forms may hinder or facilitate agency --thereby offering sociology a strategic seat at the head of the analytic table. How sociology might respond to this challenge rounds out the remainder of our discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting the "narrative turn" foundational to emergent scholarship on "ways of knowing", this paper draws on the related theoretical intersections of expressivist writing pedagogy, pathographic writing, and narrative medicine to conceptualize a model of medical communication termed "dialogic medicine" in which the patient's voice and words can claim their rightful place in the reportage of illness. Data is derived from the principal investigator's 4-year study of pathographies (illness narratives) written by patients at North America's premier tuberculosis sanatoria setting in Saranac Lake, New York prior to effective drug therapy (1884-1954). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies suggest it can take up to 17 years for research to be translated into regular use by health care providers in community practice. One reason for this lag is the lack of involvement of providers in defining research questions, and later in designing strategies for implementing findings in practice. LANet, a practice-based research network (PBRN) in Los Angeles, uses a participatory action research process called the Reflective Practitioner (RP) to engage its provider members in the development and conduct of research, and to facilitate effective interactions between providers and full-time researchers participating in the studies. This paper will give an overview of the RP process and provide a case study of RP LA Net's use of the process, and its outcomes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]