Personal knowledge and study participation.

Scientists in earlier times considered personal research participation an essential component of their work.Exposing themselves to untested interventions was seen as the most ethical way to gauge the human response to those interventions. The practice was also educational, for it generated useful information that helped researchers plan subsequent human studies.Self-experimentation was eventually replaced by more comprehensive ethical codes governing human research.But it is time to bring back the practice of self-experimentation, albeit in modified form. Through serving as a study subject, investigators and other research professionals can obtain valuable information about their work.

Selecting Instruments for Measuring the Clinical Learning Environment of Medical Education: A 4-Domain Framework.

Learning environments shape the experiences of learners and practitioners, making them an important component of program evaluation. However, educators find it challenging to decide whether to measure clinical learning environments with existing instruments or to design their own new instrument and, if using an existing instrument, which to choose. To assist educators with these decisions, the authors compared clinical learning environment instruments based on their characteristics, underlying constructs, and degree to which items reflect 4 domains (personal, social, organizational, material) from a recently developed model for conceptualizing learning environments in the health professions. Building on 3 prior literature reviews as well as a literature search, the authors identified 6 clinically oriented learning environment instruments designed for medical education. They collected key information about each instrument (e.g., number of items and subscales, conceptual frameworks, operational definitions of the learning environment) and coded items from each instrument according to the 4 domains. The 6 instruments varied in number of items, underlying constructs, subscales, definitions of clinical learning environment, and domain coverage. Most instruments focused heavily on the organizational and social domains and less on the personal and material domains (half omitted the material domain entirely). The variations in these instruments suggest that educators might consider several guiding questions. How will they define the learning environment and which theoretical lens is most applicable (e.g., personal vitality, sociocultural learning theory)? What aspects or domains of the learning environment do they most wish to capture (e.g., personal support, social interactions, organizational culture, access to resources)? How comprehensive do they want the instrument to be (and correspondingly how much time do they expect people to devote to completing the instrument and how frequently)? Whose perspective do they wish to evaluate (e.g., student, resident, fellow, attending, team, patient)? Each of these considerations is addressed.

How should complementary and alternative medicine be taught to medical students in Switzerland? A survey of medical experts and students.

BACKGROUND: In Switzerland and in the whole western world, the growing popularity of CAM is calling for its implementation in the undergraduate medical curriculum. AIMS: To determine whether medical experts and medical students are favorable to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) education at Swiss medical schools and to investigate their opinion about its form, content and goals. METHODS: Experts in the fields of conventional medicine (COM, n = 106), CAM experts (n = 29) and senior medical students (n = 640) were surveyed by an online questionnaire. RESULTS: 48.7% of the COM experts, 100% of the CAM experts, and 72.6% of the students are favorable to CAM education at Swiss medical schools. The most requested disciplines are acupuncture, phytotherapy, and homeopathy; the most recommended characteristics of CAM education are elective courses, during the clinical years, in the format of seminars and lectures. For the CAM experts, the priority is to improve the students' knowledge of CAM, whereas for the COM experts and the students, the priority is to analyze efficiency, security, interactions, and secondary effects of CAM. CONCLUSIONS: CAM courses should be informative, giving the students sufficient knowledge to provide a critical analysis of efficiency and security of different CAM modalities.

Matriz de competências para o ensino da homeopatia na graduação médica / Competency matrix for undergraduate medical education in homeopathy

Resumo: Introdução: Currículos médicos de graduação são extremamente carregados em seu conteúdo, tornando-se primordial a necessidade de otimizar competências essenciais. As Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais (DCN) do Curso de Graduação em Medicina preconizam uma valorização do tratamento do doente que possui muitas interfaces com a homeopatia. Apesar de ser uma especialidade médica no Brasil reconhecida desde 1980, a homeopatia ainda é pouco presente na graduação médica. Objetivo: Este estudo teve como objetivo desenvolver uma matriz de competências essenciais composta de conhecimentos e habilidades desejáveis para o ensino da homeopatia na graduação médica. Métodos: Trata-se de um estudo quanti-qualitativo realizado por meio da técnica Delphi normativa, em duas rodadas, com os docentes especialistas em homeopatia do país. Na primeira rodada, aplicou-se um questionário anônimo on-line para identificar as competências (conhecimentos e habilidades) necessárias em homeopatia para os discentes de graduação em Medicina. Após a análise de conteúdo, os temas foram agrupados nessas duas categorias que retornaram para apuração na segunda rodada, em que os especialistas assinalaram o grau de concordância (escala de Likert de quatro pontos: de não relevante a muito relevante). Para a definição de consenso, adotaram-se dois critérios: índice de De Loe e uma nota de relevância adotada pelos autores com vistas a discriminar mais os graus de consenso. Resultados: Dos 14 temas/subtemas relacionados como competências/conhecimentos, consideraram-se 11 como de alto consenso, dos quais cinco foram avaliados como primordiais, pois obtiveram nota de relevância acima de 9,0 (três relacionados ao grande tema clínica homeopática; um, à teoria e técnica homeopáticas; e outro, à pesquisa homeopática). Em relação às competências/habilidades, oito das 11 foram consideradas de alto consenso, e somente duas alcançaram nota acima de 9,0, ambas relacionadas à clínica homeopática. Conclusão: O ensino da homeopatia pode contribuir para a mudança paradigmática da medicina no sentido de valorizar o doente e promover a saúde, permitindo uma atuação médica mais humanizada e centrada no doente, o que justificaria a adoção de seu ensino, inclusive obrigatório, nas faculdades de Medicina. A elaboração de uma matriz de competências do que deve ser ensinado de homeopatia aos discentes da graduação médica vem ao encontro das DCN e instrumentaliza a reflexão na elaboração de uma futura ementa.

Abstract: Introduction: Undergraduate medical curricula are overloaded with content, making the need to optimize essential skills and knowledge paramount. The National Curricular Guidelines for the medical course (DCNs) put focus on patient treatment, which involves several interfaces with homeopathy. However, despite it being recognized as a medical specialty in Brazil since 1980, homeopathy is rarely present in undergraduate medical education. Objective: To develop a collection of essential skills and knowledge for teaching homeopathy as part of the undergraduate medical curriculum. Methods: Quanti-qualitative study performed using the standard Delphi technique in two rounds with specialized homeopathy teachers from Brazil. An anonymous online questionnaire was conducted to identify the learning competences needed in homeopathy for undergraduate medical students. Following content analysis, the themes and sub-themes were grouped into the two main categories of knowledge and skills, which were returned to the specialists who rated their importance for each item using the "Four-Point Likert Scale" from not at all important to very important. For the purpose of generating a general consensus, two criteria were adopted: the "De Loe index" and a importance score. Results: There was a high degree of consensus regarding eleven of the fourteen themes/sub-themes, five of which were considered essential, with an importance score above 9.0 (three related to the general theme, Homeopathic Clinic, one to Homeopathic Theory and Method and another to Homeopathic Research). There was also a high level of consensus regarding eight of the eleven skills, but only two gained a score of above 9.0, both related to Homeopathic Clinic. Conclusion: The teaching of Homeopathy can contribute to a paradigmatic change in medicine, particularly in the sense of prioritizing the patient and promoting health, as well as allowing for a more humanized and patient-centered medical engagement. These factors would justify the adoption of its teaching, so much so it could be made mandatory across all medical study. The establishment of a "competency matrix" for homeopathy study, which ought to be taught to students of the medical field, meets the DCNs and would be instrumental in future syllabuses.

Standards of education, regulation, and market control: perspectives on complementary and alternative medicine in Ontario, Canada.

This paper provides a contemporary analysis of the issues and questions surrounding the regulation and standardization of education with respect to two complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) professions, namely Chinese traditional medicine and homeopath in Ontario, Canada. Rather than taking a standard of education for granted, the assumption that standardizing professional education is a positive move is critiqued because it is claimed to ensure public safety and uniformity within the profession. It is argued that such an assumption fails to deconstruct the power relations involved with setting a standard of education and continues to ignore the fact that setting a standard of education in CAM is part and parcel of biomedical dominance, competition, turf wars and survival. At the end of this paper, some critical questions regarding setting standards of education by the health professions in general are raised.

Phosphorus (audiovisual) / Phosphorus (audiovisual)

El nuevo método audiovisual para la enseñanza de la Homeopatía es utilizado desde el año 1982. Los síntomas mentales, generales y particulares de Phosphorus están dramatizados en esta canción. Tiene una duración de 15 minutos y forma parte del "Curso de Materia Médica con audiovisuales", con un total de 15 trabajos y 25 medicamentos. Los síntomas más importantes y característicos pueden ser fijados de una manera clara y de esta manera fácilmente recordados