Evaluating SARS-CoV-2 Saliva and Dried Blood Spot Surveillance Strategies in a Congregate Population.

The optimal approach to COVID-19 surveillance in congregate populations remains unclear. Our study at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, USA, assessed the concordance of antibody prevalence in longitudinally collected dried blood spots and saliva in a setting of frequent PCR-based testing. Our findings highlight the utility of salivary-based surveillance.

Impact of Nonpharmaceutical Interventions During the COVID-19 Pandemic on Medically Attended Acute Respiratory Infection: The U.S. Naval Academy Experience.

INTRODUCTION: Medically attended acute respiratory infections (MAARI) at the U.S. Naval Academy increase during Plebe Summer, a training program for incoming freshmen. Because of COVID-19, extensive nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPI) were implemented during 2020 Plebe Summer. METHODS: We reviewed MAARI counts in weeks 22-45 from 2012 to 2020 and compared counts in pandemic (2020) vs. pre-pandemic (2012-2019) periods. RESULTS: From 2012 to 2019, an average of 1,642 MAARI cases occurred annually. In 2020, 443 MAARI cases occurred. NPI use was associated with a 77% reduction in MAARI. CONCLUSIONS: During a high-risk military training period, routine NPI use was associated with a major reduction in MAARI.

The Impact of Near-Peer Teaching on Medical Students' Transition to Clerkships.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The transition to clerkships is one of the most challenging times during medical school. To help students better cope, many schools have established transition-to-clerkship curricula. Such curricula may optimally prepare students through increasing their self-efficacy and response efficacy. We hypothesized that a small-group, near-peer-led format would be ideally suited to help students achieve these outcomes. METHODS: During process improvement for a transition-to-clerkship curriculum, we conducted an informal focus group and subsequent survey of postclerkship students to guide curricular innovation, including incorporation of third- and fourth-year students as near-peer instructors in a seminar format. Seminars included three sequential small-group discussions focused on discrete topic areas and concluded with a large-group session highlighting salient discussion points. To evaluate the impact of this educational strategy, near-peer learners were surveyed before and after the seminars. RESULTS: Junior student participants reported feeling more prepared to integrate into the health care team, develop a clerkship study plan, and access applicable, valuable study materials, both immediately following the seminars and 6 months later, demonstrating increased self-efficacy. These students placed equal or greater value on these topics as compared to students in previous year groups, demonstrating similar response efficacy. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated an increase in student self-efficacy that persisted 6 months postintervention, in addition to similar response efficacy. Future research could be directed toward: (1) investigating whether improvements in self-efficacy among students transitioning to clerkships are associated with improved clerkship performance and (2) studying outcomes for near-peer teachers.

Information retention among attendees at a traditional poster presentation session.

No abstract available.

Military Interprofessional Health Care Teams: How USU is Working to Harness the Power of Collaboration.

Despite efforts to increase patient safety, hundreds of thousands of lives are lost each year to preventable health care errors. The Institute of Medicine and other organizations have recommended that facilitating effective interprofessional health care team work can help address this problem. While the concept of interprofessional health care teams is known, understanding and organizing effective team performance have proven to be elusive goals. Although considerable research has been conducted in the civilian sector, scholars have yet to extend research to the military context. Indeed, delivering the highest caliber of health care to our service men and women is vitally important. This commentary describes a new initiative as the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences aimed at researching the characteristics of successful military interprofessional teams and why those characteristics are important. It also describes the interprofessional education initiative that Uniformed Services University is launching to help optimize U.S. military health care.

Microblog use and student engagement in the large-classroom setting.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Encouraging student engagement in the large-classroom setting can be difficult. Challenges include the depersonalized nature of the environment and the fact that students frequently find asking questions and participating in class discussion intimidating. Social media has the potential to address these barriers, but this has not yet been formally evaluated. Our study analyzed the impact of microblog use on students' question-asking behaviors (an indicator of student engagement) in a large-classroom setting. METHODS: Formative evaluation of a large-classroom medical humanities course identified microblog use as a potential tool to facilitate greater student engagement. A microblog was thereafter incorporated into the course. Student engagement was operationalized as question-asking behaviors before and after microblog incorporation. RESULTS: Paired t tests showed that the total number of questions asked was significantly greater in the microblog-available classes, t (2)=12.12. In addition, significantly more individual students asked questions in the microblog-available classes, t (2)=17.39. CONCLUSIONS: Our study, demonstrating an increase in question-asking behavior after incorporation of a microblog, has important implications for educators who seek to enhance student engagement and learning in the large-classroom setting. In addition, innovative use of emerging technologies (such as microblogs) as educational tools requires continuous assessment and iterative change to maximize benefit. More research is needed to evaluate what specific barriers to engagement are overcome by microblog use and whether microblog use can similarly benefit other courses.

When war follows combat veterans home.

While combat survivability is at an all-time high, vets return home to private struggles with depression, PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and substance abuse. Here's how to spot these patients in civilian medical practices and the steps you can take to help them.

Mentorship and job satisfaction among Navy family physicians.

OBJECTIVE: Among civilian academic physicians, having a mentor is associated with greater job satisfaction. Whether this is true for military physicians is unknown. We sought to examine whether having a mentor is associated with positive job satisfaction among Navy family physicians. METHODS: A web-based survey was sent to all Navy family physicians in the Specialty leader's database in May 2008. Our main outcome variable was "positive job satisfaction," and our main exposure variable was being in a mentor relationship. Chi-square was used to test for difference in frequencies in categorical variables and logistic regression was used to adjust for covariates. RESULTS: The response rate was 60.2% (186/309). Among respondents, 73.7% reported positive job satisfaction. Factors associated with positive job satisfaction included having a mentor, being >9 years postresidency, spending <50% of time in patient care, higher rank, male gender, and being active in research. After adjustment for these factors, having a mentor remained significantly associated with positive job satisfaction (odds ratio 2.86, 95% confidence interval 1.22-6.71). CONCLUSION: Having a mentor is associated with positive job satisfaction among Navy family physicians, even after adjusting for multiple other factors. An implication is that a mentorship program may be a strategy for improving job satisfaction.