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Introduction Leadership is an area of education and training that is critical to the development of medical providers as health care professionals, yet few medical school curricula offer formal training in this area. Methods We designed and implemented a course to develop and enhance the leadership and teamwork skills of first-year medical students to better prepare them for medical practice. Following a systematic literature review to identify leadership core competencies, the Leadership in Medicine Optional Enrichment Elective (OEE) was developed in accordance with the University of Massachusetts Medical School's course guidelines. The elective included six interactive sessions to advance skills in the areas of recognizing and utilizing effective leadership styles, communication within the health care team, giving and receiving feedback, delegating responsibilities, and direction setting. We designed a robust, evidence-based, scholarly evaluation plan for the OEE that was integral to ongoing quality improvement of the course. Results Outcomes were assessed in alignment with the Kirkpatrick method of standardized evaluation. A total of 26 participants completed the course. At completion, participants demonstrated learning and advancement of skills in all five leadership domains. Furthermore, participants found meaning in the course and planned to utilize their skills in future medical practice. Discussion The development, implementation, and evaluation of this program can serve as a model for future course development, and the program can be adapted and implemented by other institutions in an effort to address the learning gap regarding leadership education.

We present a case of a young lady with extreme involuntary weight loss and alarming constitutional symptoms found ultimately to be all due to a single medication’s side effects. The objective of this case report is to alert physicians, especially in a primary care setting, that the side effects of a medication used mostly in a highly specialized field of neurology, sodium oxybate (SXB), can cause extreme involuntary weight loss in addition to chronic night sweats and symptoms of clinical depression.

The diagnosis of small-bowel tumors is challenging due to their low incidence, nonspecific presentation, and limitations of traditional endoscopic techniques. In our study, we examined the utility of the mucosal protrusion angle in differentiating between true submucosal masses and bulges of the small bowel on video capsule endoscopy. We retrospectively reviewed video capsule endoscopies of 34 patients who had suspected small-bowel lesions between 2002 and 2017. Mucosal protrusion angles were defined as the angle between the small-bowel protruding lesion and surrounding mucosa and were measured using a protractor placed on a computer screen. We found that 25 patients were found to have true submucosal masses based on pathology and 9 patients had innocent bulges due to extrinsic compression. True submucosal masses had an average measured protrusion angle of 45.7 degrees &plusmn, 20.8 whereas innocent bulges had an average protrusion angle of 108.6 degrees &plusmn, 16.3 (p &lt, 0.0001, unpaired t-test). Acute angle of protrusion accurately discriminated between true submucosal masses and extrinsic compression bulges on Fisher&rsquo, s exact test (p = 0.0001). Our findings suggest that mucosal protrusion angle is a simple and useful tool for differentiating between true masses and innocent bulges of the small bowel.