Resource materials for faculty development.

BACKGROUND AND METHODS: Practical, well-designed, state-of-the-art resources are needed to help medical faculty enhance their skills as educators, researchers, administrators, and academics. Books, audio and video programs, CD-ROM-based programs, and interactive programs created for use on the Internet are needed for independent study, for peer learning, and for activities that are facilitated by faculty developers. The more pressure there is on faculty time, the more desirable becomes the availability of resources that can be used privately, flexibly, and in multiple locations (including home). In this paper, we 1) describe the strategies we used in identifying resources, 2) briefly describe some recently developed resources, 3) make observations about existing resources, and (4) make recommendations for the kinds of resources that need to be created and some criteria to consider when selecting and creating resources. The task of finding existing resources proved to be quite difficult, so as an outgrowth of the research done for this article, we created a Web site (http:@www.uchsc.edu/CIS) that provides a continually updated, annotated list of resources for faculty in the health professions and links to other sites with relevant information.

Learning and teaching styles: implications for teachers of family medicine.

BACKGROUND: Much attention has been given to learning and teaching "styles" in adult education and in medical education. Since style refers to assumptions and beliefs about how adults learn, it affects what teachers do to facilitate learning. A synthesis of two models views the educational process as a cycle: "experience," followed by "reflection," "abstraction," and "experimentation." Four styles of learning or teaching are possible by combining experience with observation, observation with abstraction, abstraction with experimentation, and experimentation with experience. Students and residents could use this information to negotiate with faculty to best meet their educational needs, and faculty could use this information to tailor their teaching strategies to best suit each encounter.

Mixed cryoglobulinemia in chronic hepatitis C infection. A clinicopathologic analysis of 10 cases and review of recent literature.

We present 10 cases of mixed cryoglobulinemia in patients infected with hepatitis C, including pertinent clinical, serologic, and pathological data. The findings attributable to MC appear to be similar in patients who are HCV-infected as in those with unknown HCV status. The prevalence of MC in HCV-infected patients appears to be lower in our region (13%) than in southern Europe (50-90%) although some of this difference is due to our requirement that patients included in our study have a cryocrit of at least 5%. In our patients, cryoglobulins were shown to be deposited in skin and kidney, but not in liver. The mechanisms by which HCV and MC are related remain uncertain. Although we and others have evidence for enrichment of HCV RNA in the cryoprecipitates of some patients, this was not always the case, and it is not yet clear that this finding is of fundamental pathogenic importance. Finally, it appears that some patients with HCV and MC may have a beneficial clinical response of vasculitic symptoms to therapy with alpha-interferon, as well as to glucocorticoids or other immunosuppressants. In our group, no predictors were apparent to distinguish responders from nonresponders before treatment. Similarly, the duration of response remains to be determined.

A review of constructivism: understanding and using a relatively new theory.

The purpose of this review paper is to familiarize family medicine educators with a relatively new educational theory, "constructivism." This theory is derived from the philosophical proposition that reality is constructed by the individual. According to the more traditional theory of "objectivism," knowledge exists in the world external to personal experience. Constructivist theory postulates that personal experience cannot be separated from knowledge. In analyzing the literature, the author found that constructivism can be viewed at the cognitive (individual) and social (community) levels. Cognitive constructivism maintains that individuals develop their own models of reality using personal experience and research-based data. Two key elements of cognitive constructivism with implications for family medicine educators are promoting student independence and active learning. Social constructivism maintains that individuals use their membership in a community to continually refine and shape their models of reality. By communicating with each other (for physicians, in the "conversation of medicine"), we test our constructs. Two key elements of social constructivism with implications for application by family medicine educators are promoting collaboration and peer teaching.

Creative medical teaching. Commitment to becoming the best.

The limits of exciting and fruitful medical teaching exist only in the mind of the teacher. Whether the instructor is in a classroom lecturing, in a small group experience, or in a clinical setting, teaching can be made both interesting and informative if the educator is willing to plan the encounter so that both teacher and student may come away feeling fulfilled.