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Physicians need to stay up-to-date with new developments in their field of expertise. This expectation has been made explicit by competency-based educational outcomes in the domain of scholar in the Dutch blueprint. There is a great diversity in teaching methods that aim to achieve a better understanding of scientific knowledge. Applying a constructivist approach to learning in acquiring research competencies we wonder how a research-intensive course is evaluated early in the curriculum and what learning gain students perceive. In a collaborative research-intensive course, the class of 300s-year students rated the quality of 150 preselected randomized controlled trials (RCT) using JAMA Users’ Guides, and the pharmaceutical advertisements in which they were referenced. Each student rated two RCTs. Data were analyzed to answer a relevant research question. After the course students completed an evaluation survey. We did this in five consecutive years to capture student experience in relation to fostering a scientific mindset (n = 1,500). In addition we studied outcome of this scientific mindset as scientific output (publications) in journals. Survey data indicate that it is feasible to successfully implement a research-intensive course based on a large cohort using a constructivist paradigm early in the curriculum. Students consider it challenging and report high learning gain in several domains. Aggregated data have even led to four publications in journals. Implementing an active learning research experience early in the curriculum can foster student attitudes, provided the level of difficulty correctly matches the learners’ prior knowledge. Further research is required to determine how to improve these active research curricula to maximize impact on learners.

Šis tyrimas yra pirmasis bandymas sistemingai surinkti informaciją apie tai, kas vyksta Baltijos šalyse ir šiaurės vakarų Rusijoje IKT srities tyrimuose bei švietime. Iš esmės tai yra bendrojo tyrimo ir faktų analizės projektas, kurio tikslas sudaryti palankias sąlygas tolimesniems tyrimams bei projektams IKT srityje. Tyrimas nustato, ar e-gebėjimai, t.y., IKT specialistų parengimo lygis, atitinka IKT pramonės reikalavimus ir rinkos poreikius šiaurės vakarų Rusijoje, Kaliningrado srityje, Estijoje, Latvijoje bei Lietuvoje. Pagrindinį šio tyrimo tikslą galima padalinti į tris uždavinius: • Švietimo organizacijų, teikiančių IKT specialistų rengimo paslaugas regione, apžvalga. Tam kad nustatyti, kokie specialistai yra rengiami bei kokie tyrimai yra atliekami regiono universitetuose ir mokslinių tyrimų institutuose, yra tiriami pagrindiniai technologijų universitetai, aukštosios mokyklos ir kitos viešosios bei privačios mokymo įstaigos ir tyrimų centrai. • Kompetencijos IKT srityje rinkos poreikių identifikavimas, nukreiptas į IKT industriją bei smulkiąsias ir vidutines įmones. • Nesutapimų tarp IKT specialistų parengimo lygio ir skaitmeninės ekonomikos reikalavimų, nustatymas. The study is the first attempt to systematically gather information about what is happening in research and education in the ICT field in the Baltic countries and Northwest Russia, so it is mostly a general investigation and fact-finding project, leading to possible future research and activities in the field. The study will estimate how well the supply of eSkills, that is, educated ICT graduates, meets the requirements of the ICT industry and the needs of the market in Northwest Russia, Kaliningrad, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The main objective of this study can be divided into three tasks: • Surveying educational organisations providing ICT education and training in the region. The main technical universities, high schools and other public and private institutions, as well as research centres, will be examined with the goal of charting what specialists are being produced and what research is being carried out in the universities and research institutions of the region. • Identifying the market needs for ICT competence with the focus on the ICT industry and SMEs. • Highlighting discrepancies between the supply of ICT educated graduates and the demand of the digital economy.

All female graduates of the Family Practice Residency Program at the University of Manitoba over a 10-year period (1974-1983) were surveyed with respect to demographic data; training; present practice profiles; personal life and attitudes; professional attitudes; and career satisfaction. Respondents perceived two significant problem areas: combining family and career, and discrimination against women. The author of this paper makes some suggestions for alleviating these problems. More knowledge about female physicians' attitudes, their practice profiles, and the difficulties they encounter will facilitate improvements in manpower planning and medical education.

In a six-year retrospective audit of 405 obstetric cases managed in a small rural Saskatchewan hospital, it was demonstrated that proper patient selection leads to excellent outcomes. The standards of practice were shown to be concordant with similar practices in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Some researchers have shown that advertising by the pharmaceutical industry has a significant impact on the prescribing habits of physicians. Promotional material invades the practice of physicians in many guises, including journal advertisements, drug samples, clinical symposia sponsored by drug manufacturers, and the ever-diligent detail person. The author analyzed the prevalence of drug advertising, and found that promotional material was present in all the offices and examining rooms of clinicians in a Canadian family practice teaching centre. On average, 10.5 promotional items were present in each individual patient care area and almost 750 items were found in each physician's office.

General practice and out-patient emergency records for a five-year period were reviewed for injuries and illnesses that occurred during the week of deer rifle hunting on Manitoulin Island. Of 65 hunters who were identified, most had lacerations secondary to knife injuries. There were two deaths (one shooting and one in a motor vehicle accident), and 19 persons required hospitalization. More than half of these serious accidents occurred on the weekends immediately preceding or following the hunting season. Incidence of injury or illness requiring medical attention was calculated to be 0.23% per hunter each week of the deer season. Spot checks for alcohol and improved hunter safety courses might prevent many of these injuries and illnesses.

To evaluate the outcome of the program for graduate studies in family medicine at the University of Western Ontario, all 45 participants in the program were surveyed. Thirty-six percent of respondents held full-time academic appointments and 42% part-time academic positions. Eighty-four percent indicated a moderate to major effect on their career as a teacher; 67% indicated a moderate to major change in research skills; 42% indicated such a change in administrative skills. Ninety-one percent said they had achieved all or most of their objective in taking the program.

Faculty of the Discipline of Family Medicine at Memorial University of Newfoundland saw a need to improve the teaching to residents in the management of psychiatric emergencies and in crisis intervention. A short course, entitled “Psychiatric Emergencies and Crisis Intervention” (PEACI), was developed around the common psychiatric emergencies that family physicians encounter. The elements of this course included a pre-test and post-test, selected reading for independent study, lectures and seminars, simulated patient encounters, debriefing sessions, and evaluation. Most of the residents rated the course as “very good” or “excellent” and wished to repeat the course in a year's time.

Research is just one part of an academic physician's activities, which also include teaching, patient care, and administration. Research productivity, however, is still expected for academic advancement and to enhance family medicine as an academic discipline. The five units of Laval University's Department of Family Medicine were surveyed to determine the effect of family physicians trained in research on the number and type of publications produced by all of their teachers between 1982 and 1987. A total of 55 articles were published. Forty-eight per cent of the teachers had participated in the generation of at least one publication during the study period. The presence of family physicians trained in research proved to be the most significant factor influencing the number and type of articles published in each unit.

A questionnaire was mailed to 564 rural Alberta physicians to determine the demographic profile of practising rural physicians, to identify factors that attracted and retained physicians in rural practice, and to identify the skills that newly trained general practitioners require for rural practice. Rural-based physicians were relatively young (50% below the age of 38 years) and predominantly male (86%). Approximately 73% were general practitioners without certification by the College of Family Physicians of Canada, and 19% were family physicians with certification. Compared with the Canadian-trained physicians (56%), foreign-trained rural physicians (44%) tended to be older, to have been longer than 10 years in rural practice, and to have had more than four years of postgraduate training. The major reasons for contemplating leaving rural practice were retirement, career advancement or limited challenge, and heavy work-load.

Various authors have suggested the possibility of a link between biological age and sexual activity. Zelnick (1981) described the relationship between sexual activity and age at menarche. To determine the relationship between biological age and age at first sexual intercourse, we presented a questionnaire to 450 students attending a comprehensive secondary school in Montreal. Age at menarche and age at first conscious ejaculation were used to measure biological age. A partial correlation was made between biological age and age at first sexual intercourse by controlling for chronological age. The results were r = 0.24 (p

Since the Memoria, Voz, y Patrimonio (MVP) Conference (2003), the archival literature continues to grapple with issues pertinent to Latina/o archives. Extending the work of the MVP Conference, drawing on the archival and cultural studies literature, and grounded in our experiences with under-represented communities, this epilogue offers our meditations on the future of Latina/o archival and memory practice, research and education. The archives and archivists as social structures and agents, respectively, are viewed through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s symbolic power whereby they need to be liberated from the symbolic domination legitimized and reproduced in the classic archives.

Teaching about the family has become an important part of the family medicine curriculum. The family orientation index, a 39-item questionnaire, was designed to evaluate the family orientation of services and care provided as well as the teaching and research. The questionnaire was distributed to 55 program directors at 16 Canadian universities. The response rate was 84%. The results indicate that the family orientation of services is less than optimal.

The author reports on six months' experience of obtaining advance directives from patients for care in a family practice. Patients were questioned about their preferences for comfort or prolonging life and then were asked to delegate a substitute decision maker. Of 20 patients, all who responded chose comfort over prolonging life. Delegated substitute decision makers included spouses, children, and professionals or friends. In this population, patients overwhelmingly favoured comfort over prolonging life in the event that they might be irreversibly disabled, and they tended to choose spouses or other first-degree relatives as substitute decision makers.

This study examined the effect on the type of maternity care given low-risk mothers in a family practice where approximately one-half of the patients were coached in labour by midwives. It was found that the same caregiver tended to make fewer obstetrical interventions with the midwife-coached patients. While the study was not methodologically rigorous, it nevertheless illustrated trends that the authors believed to be valid when midwives were involved. Future studies might document the trends more clearly and suggest areas for co-operation between family doctors and midwives.

The authors assessed the influence of residency training in family medicine on physicians' attitudes toward comprehensive care by surveying a representative sample of Quebec family physicians. The sample consisted of 290 physicians trained in family medicine and 267 physicians trained in internship programs. Multivariate regression analysis was performed to measure the influence of training on physicians' attitudes independently of physicians' sociodemographic and practice characteristics. Graduates of family medicine had more positive attitudes than other generalists toward three aspects of comprehensive care, even after controlling for sociodemographic and practice characteristics.

WOMEN MEDICAL GRADUATES OF MCMASTER UNIVERSITY WERE DIVIDED INTO TWO GROUPS: those in the fields traditionally chosen by women (primary care, general internal medicine, pediatrics, psychiatry, and anesthesia), and those in nontraditional fields (surgery, subspecialties of medicine, and academic medicine). The careers of the two groups of women were then compared with matched groups of men physicians. More women choosing traditional careers worked in another field, frequently health-related, before deciding to enter medicine than women entering nontraditional careers. Fewer of the former had a university education in the natural sciences, and more of them were married at the start of post-graduate training. Both groups of women worked shorter hours than the comparison groups of men. More women in traditional careers had selected group practice than had the corresponding men. Influences on career choices showed more sex similarities than career-type similarities, with women influenced more by factors related to family responsibilities. Few in any group reported that their choices are not their preferences. The results suggest that complete convergence of the medical careers of men and women in the near future is unlikely.

The author of this paper examines physicians' regard for the confidentiality of medical information in the light of their perception of their own role. Five case studies of increasing complexity of medical management and ethical issues, derived from practice and accompanied by questions relating to confidentiality and medical management, were submitted to randomly selected family physicians in Alberta. Analysis of the replies to determine attitudes to confidentiality and how the respondents perceived patients' best interests, and statements of how they would act in certain situations, disclosed that a substantial minority of the physicians were still prepared to breach confidentiality and exercise Hippocratic professional judgement in certain situations. The bases of confidentiality of medical information are reviewed, together with changing modes of medical ethics and the increasing trend to rights derived from patients, autonomy, and the ways in which these factors may affect the physician-patient relationship.

MEDICAL EDUCATION NEEDS TO MOVE BEYOND THE BIOMEDICAL MODEL TO REDRESS THE BALANCE BETWEEN THE TWO GREAT HISTORICAL TRADITIONS IN MEDICINE: the reductionistic and the whole person approaches. Students need to understand the distinctions between disease as an abstract concept and illness as an experience lived by their patients. They need to approach the study of both the sciences and the humanities with a rigorous, thoughtful, and balanced approach, and learn to integrate these understandings and to apply them to the care of sick persons. Medical education should be more than vocational training: it must be a liberal education. The missing dimension in medical education is the person, both the person of the patient and the person of the student. The experiences of both are the very foundations of learning, growth, and healing.

Continuing medical education is one of the many challenges facing rural family physicians. In addition to the education needed for office practice, rural family physicians must develop and maintain a special knowledge base and technical skills applicable to their major hospital roles. This study of full-time rural family physicians' CME patterns and preferences illustrates how useful and enjoyable they find various CME options.