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Background: In pediatric medical emergencies, paramedics and emergency physicians must often rely on the information of third parties, often caregivers, to gather information. Failing to obtain relevant information may lead to misinterpretation of symptoms and subsequent errors in decision making and clinical treatment. Thus, children and/or caregivers with limited proficiency of the locally spoken language may be at risk for medical errors. This study analyzes logs of rescue missions to determine whether paramedics could obtain essential information from German-speaking and foreign-language children and their caregivers. Methods: We conducted a secondary data analysis based on retrospective data on pediatric patients of four emergency medical services (EMS) stations in Northern Germany. We defined language discordance with communication difficulties as main exposure. We used documentation quality as outcome defined as existing information on (a) pre-existing conditions, (b) current medication, and (c) events prior to the medical emergency. Statistical analyses include descriptive statistics, simple regression and multivariable regression. As multivariable regression model, a logistic regression was applied with documentation quality as dependent variable and language discordance with communication difficulties as independent variable adjusted for age, sex and Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS). Results: Data from 1,430 pediatric rescue missions were analyzed with 3.1% (n = 45) having a language discordance with communication difficulties. Patients in the pediatric foreign-language group were younger compared to German-speaking patients. Thorough documentation was more frequent in German-speaking patients than in patients in the foreign-language group. Pre-existing conditions and events prior to the medical emergency were considerably more often documented in German-speaking than for foreign-language patients. Documentation of medication did not differ between these groups. The adjustment of sex, age and GCS in the multivariable analysis did not change the results. Conclusion: Language barriers are hindering paramedics to obtain relevant information in pediatric pre-hospital emergencies. This jeopardizes the safe provision of paramedic care to children who themselves or their caregivers are not fluent in German language. Further research should focus on feasible ways to overcome language barriers in pre-hospital emergencies. Trial registration: This is a retrospective secondary data analysis of a study that was registered at the German Clinical Trials Register (No. DRKS00016719), 08/02/2019. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marburger Bund is the largest doctors' union in Europe representing about 125,000 salaried doctors in Germany and fights for fair working conditions, appropriate salaries, quality in training, and improvements in the work-life balance. Following a decision of 127th Marburger Bund General Assembly 2015, criteria should be developed to be applied by participants to assess independence in planning and delivery of individual CME activities. This position paper describes the role of methodological and medical competence generation and use of data (evidence) independent sources of information independence of faculty in CME language in medical education conduct of independent CME, and independence of (passive) physician participants in CME Measures are defined by which independence in CME may be achieved and how this may change the process of CME delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To develop a scientifically sound and standardized medical language examination for the State of Bavaria according to the require- ments set forth by the 87th Conference of State Health Ministers. This Sprachtest für Ausländische Mediziner (SAM, Language Test for Foreign Physicians) ought to become part of the licensing procedure for foreign physicians in Germany. Using testing stations that are situation-based, it will assess medical language competence and communication skills at the proficiency level of C1. Methods: Case scenarios for four mini-interviews of 10 minutes each were developed. For the written part of the exam, consisting of two separate testing stations with a combined duration of 40 minutes, one video of a physician taking a patient's history and one annotated set of laboratory results were developed. Based on the analysis of existing scientific literature as well as real-life examples, features and charac- teristics of professional medical language were identified. This served as the basis for the development of itemized rating scales for each of the testing stations. The exam was validated in three simulated trial runs. Each run was video-recorded and subsequently graded by a team of test-raters. Results: 19 participants took part in the three trial runs. A benchmark (gold standard) could be set for 18 of these. A ROC-analysis yielded an AUC-value of .83. This confirmed the predictive quality of the SAM-test. The reliability of the SAM-test could be calculated for only ten parti- cipants. The internal consistency, calculated with the use of Cronbach's Alpha, was .85. The pass/fail mark was calculated based on the Youden- Index and yielded a result of >60%. Conclusion: The SAM-test presents a statistically valid medical language examination with a high level of objectivity. As required, it tests language proficiency at the level of C1 and uses authentic communication scenarios within a standardized test setting. Additional studies with larger test samples will help to further validate this test and thus guarantee a higher degree of reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Standardization in clinical documentation can increase efficiency and can save time and resources. Objective: The objectives of this work are to compare documentation forms for acute coronary syndrome (ACS), check for standardization, and generate a list of the most common data elements using semantic form annotation with the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS). Methods: Forms from registries, studies, risk scores, quality assurance, official guidelines, and routine documentation from four hospitals in Germany were semantically annotated using UMLS. This allowed for automatic comparison of concept frequencies and the generation of a list of the most common concepts. Results: A total of 3710 forms items from 86 sources were semantically annotated using 842 unique UMLS concepts. Half of all medical concept occurrences were covered by 60 unique concepts, which suggests the existence of a core dataset of relevant concepts. Overlap percentages between forms were relatively low, hinting at inconsistent documentation structures and lack of standardization. Conclusions: This analysis shows a lack of standardized and semantically enriched documentation for patients with ACS. Efforts made by official institutions like the European Society for Cardiology have not yet been fully implemented. Utilizing a standardized and annotated core dataset of the most important data concepts could make export and automatic reuse of data easier. The generated list of common data elements is an exemplary implementation suggestion of the concepts to use in a standardized approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]