Development of a Novel Web-Based Tool to Enhance Clinical Skills in Medical Education.

Unlabelled: A significant component of Canadian medical education is the development of clinical skills. The medical educational curriculum assesses these skills through an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE). This OSCE assesses skills imperative to good clinical practice, such as patient communication, clinical decision-making, and medical knowledge. Despite the widespread implementation of this examination across all academic settings, few preparatory resources exist that cater specifically to Canadian medical students. MonkeyJacket is a novel, open-access, web-based application, built with the goal of providing medical students with an accessible and representative tool for clinical skill development for the OSCE and clinical settings. This viewpoint paper presents the development of the MonkeyJacket application and its potential to assist medical students in preparation for clinical examinations and practical settings. Limited resources exist that are web-based; accessible in terms of cost; specific to the Medical Council of Canada (MCC); and, most importantly, scalable in nature. The goal of this research study was to thoroughly describe the potential utility of the application, particularly its capacity to provide practice and scalable formative feedback to medical students. MonkeyJacket was developed to provide Canadian medical students with the opportunity to practice their clinical examination skills and receive peer feedback by using a centralized platform. The OSCE cases included in the application were developed by using the MCC guidelines to ensure their applicability to a Canadian setting. There are currently 75 cases covering 5 specialties, including cardiology, respirology, gastroenterology, neurology, and psychiatry. The MonkeyJacket application is a web-based platform that allows medical students to practice clinical decision-making skills in real time with their peers through a synchronous platform. Through this application, students can practice patient interviewing, clinical reasoning, developing differential diagnoses, and formulating a management plan, and they can receive both qualitative feedback and quantitative feedback. Each clinical case is associated with an assessment checklist that is accessible to students after practice sessions are complete; the checklist promotes personal improvement through peer feedback. This tool provides students with relevant case stems, follow-up questions that probe for differential diagnoses and management plans, assessment checklists, and the ability to review the trend in their performance. The MonkeyJacket application provides medical students with a valuable tool that promotes clinical skill development for OSCEs and clinical settings. MonkeyJacket introduces a way for medical learners to receive feedback regarding patient interviewing and clinical reasoning skills that is both formative and scalable in nature, in addition to promoting interinstitutional learning. The widespread use of this application can increase the practice of and feedback on clinical skills among medical learners. This will not only benefit the learner; more importantly, it can provide downstream benefits for the most valuable stakeholder in medicine-the patient.

Menstrual cycle and oral contraceptives influence cerebrovascular dynamics during hypercapnia.

Women experience fluctuating orthostatic intolerance during the menstrual cycle, suggesting sex hormones may influence cerebral blood flow. Young (aged 18-30) healthy women, either taking oral contraceptives (OC; n = 14) or not taking OC (NOC; n = 12), were administered hypercapnic gas (5%) for 5 min in the low hormone (LH; placebo pill) and high hormone (HH; active pill) menstrual phases. Hemodynamic and cerebrovascular variables were continuously measured. Cerebral blood velocity changes were monitored using transcranial doppler ultrasound of the middle cerebral artery to determine cerebrovascular reactivity. Cerebral autoregulation was assessed using steady-state analysis (static cerebral autoregulation) and transfer function analysis (dynamic cerebral autoregulation; dCA). In response to hypercapnia, menstrual phase did not influence static cardiovascular or cerebrovascular responses (all p > 0.07); however, OC users had a greater increase of mean middle cerebral artery blood velocity compared to NOC (NOC-LH 12 ± 6 cm/s vs. NOC-HH 16 ± 9 cm/s; OC-LH 18 ± 5 cm/s vs. OC-HH 17 ± 11 cm/s; p = 0.048). In all women, hypercapnia improved high frequency (HF) and very low frequency (VLF) cerebral autoregulation (decreased nGain; p = 0.002 and <0.001, respectively), whereas low frequency (LF) Phase decreased in NOC-HH (p = 0.001) and OC-LH (p = 0.004). Therefore, endogenous sex hormones reduce LF dCA during hypercapnia in the HH menstrual phase. In contrast, pharmaceutical sex hormones (OC use) have no acute influence (HH menstrual phase) yet elicit a chronic attenuation of LF dCA (LH menstrual phase) during hypercapnia.

Oral contraceptives and menstrual cycle influence autonomic reflex function.

Progesterone and its analogues are known to influence ventilation. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the role of endogenous and pharmaceutical female sex hormones in ventilatory control during the activation of the metaboreflex, mechanoreflex, and CO2 chemoreflex. Women aged 18-30 taking (n = 14) or not taking (n = 12) oral contraceptives (OC and NOC, respectively) were tested in the low hormone (LH) and high hormone (HH) conditions corresponding to the early follicular and mid-luteal phases (NOC) or placebo and high-dose pills (OC). Women underwent three randomized trials: (a) 3 min of passive leg movement (PLM), (b) 2 min of 40% maximal voluntary handgrip exercise followed by 2 min of post-exercise circulatory occlusion (PECO), and (c) 5 min of breathing 5% CO2 . We primarily measured hemodynamics and ventilation. During PLM, the OC group had a smaller pressor response (p = .012). During PECO, the OC group similarly exhibited a smaller pressor response (p = .043) and also exhibited a greater ventilatory response (p = .024). Lastly, in response to breathing 5% CO2 , women in the HH phase had a greater ventilatory response (p = .022). We found that OC use attenuates the pressor response to both the metaboreflex and mechanoreflex while increasing the ventilatory response to metaboreflex activation. We also found evidence of an enhanced CO2 chemoreflex in the HH phase. We hypothesize that OC effects are from the chronic upregulation of pulmonary and vascular ß-adrenergic receptors. We further suggest that the increased cyclic progesterone in the HH phase enhances the chemoreflex.