The Effectiveness of Mind-Body Intervention on Psychological Well-Being during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Pilot Pre-Post Interventional Study.

The pandemic highlighted the need for alternative, more accessible access to mental health interventions that can be readily administered remotely. The purpose of this pre-post-interventional study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a virtual mind-body medicine training course on stress, anxiety, and depression levels. University employees and members of the Las Vegas community were recruited via self-selection and snowball sampling and subjected to online mind-body practice sessions in December of 2020. Stress, anxiety, depression, and quality of life were assessed pre- and post-intervention using standardized psychometric valid tools. The paired t-test and related samples marginal homogeneity tests were used for continuous and categorical outcomes, respectively. Depression and stress scores were significantly decreased (p < 0.001). Mean scores of professional quality of life improved post-intervention compared to pre-intervention (p = 0.03). A significantly larger proportion of participants reported no depression or stress post-intervention compared with pre-intervention (p < 0.001, p = 0.003, respectively.) This study suggests that virtual mind-body practices had a pronounced impact on stress and depression levels during the pandemic. These findings support virtual, online-guided mind-body medicine training as an effective intervention that can be administered virtually to reduce stress and depression symptoms.

Medical Students' Socioeconomic Status and Academic Performance in Medical School.

Background Students from lower socioeconomic groups tend to underestimate their chances of acceptance to medical school and their likelihood of success once admitted. Objective The objective of this study is to determine if socioeconomic disadvantage status is linked to lower medical college admission test (MCAT) scores and academic performance in medical school. Methods Using the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) education/occupation (EO) indicator, we compared economically disadvantaged students to students with no financial disadvantage on the MCAT, Phase 1 National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1, Phase 2 NBME, and USMLE Step 2 test scores. Results Medical students in the disadvantaged group scored significantly lower on the MCAT than students with no financial disadvantage. The disadvantaged group showed a non-significant lower trend in performance until USMLE Step 2. Conclusions Applicants from lower socioeconomic backgrounds may perform lower on their MCAT and early medical school benchmark exams, but they appear to catch up with and even surpass their peers on their USMLE Step 2 examination.

Exploring Anki Usage Among First-Year Medical Students During an Anatomy & Physiology Course: A Pilot Study.

Objectives: As medical schools worldwide condense the preclinical phase of medical education, it is increasingly important to identify resources that help medical students retain and employ the medical information. One popular tool among medical students is an application called Anki, a free and open-source flashcard program utilizing spaced repetition for quick and durable memorization. The purpose of this study is to determine how variable Anki usage among first-year medical students throughout a standardized anatomy and physiology course correlates with performance. Methods: We designed a novel Anki add-on called "Anki Stat Scraper" to collect data on first-year medical students at Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine during their 8-week anatomy and physiology course. Anki users (N = 45) were separated into four groups: Heavy (N = 5), intermediate (N = 5), light (N = 16), and limited-Anki (N = 19) users, based on the time each student spent on the flashcard app, how many flashcards they studied per day, and how many days they used the app prior to their anatomy and physiology exam. A 14-question Likert scale questionnaire was administered to each participant to gauge their understanding of Anki and how they used the app to study. Results: Heavy and intermediate Anki users had higher average exam scores than their counterparts who did not use Anki as a study method. Average exam scores were 90.34%, 91.74%, 85.86%, and 87.75% for heavy, intermediate, light, and limited-Anki users respectively (p > 0.05). Our survey demonstrated that Anki users spent an average of 73.86% of their study time using Anki, compared to an average of 36.53% for limited-Anki users (p < 0.001). Conclusion: Anki users did not score significantly higher compared to limited-Anki users. However, survey responses from students believe that Anki may still be a useful educational tool for future medical students.

Regional and Acute Pain Anesthesiology Post COVID-19 Assessment and Recommendations for Fellowship Web Based Platforms.

In today's applicant landscape, the SARS-COV-2 pandemic has drastically altered the traditional model of in-person interviews shifting it to an online format often conducted by web-based applications. Fellowship programs and naturally fellowship program directors face a new challenge of standardizing information to be distributed to prospective fellowship applicants through American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine (ASRA) common application. Here we describe a set of 11 criteria recommended by other similar studies selected for evaluation of online program training platforms, where only 13.3% of the acute and regional pain fellowship program online platforms met 75% of the criteria with limited presence in areas of research, rotation schedules, list of fellows, alumni, and life in the area. Additional considerations pertaining to the types of procedures performed, evaluation, mentorship, academic involvement, and teaching should be undertaken by the programs.

Impact of High School Quality on Academic Performance Throughout Medical School.

INTRODUCTION: Numerous studies currently evaluate medical school success and performance using college Grade Point Average (GPA) and Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) scores. These studies demonstrate that students who score low on the MCAT will continually perform worse than their peers on medical school exams and board exams. We investigated where a student attended high school and how that factor can affect medical school performance because most studies evaluated performance based on college attendance. METHODS: Our retrospective study evaluated 184 students at Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine (KSOM) and showed higher-quality high schools, in comparison to lower-quality high schools, affected medical school performance. We categorized two groups for high school quality based on the U.S. News scorecard for programs within Nevada: those students with a high school reading proficiency (HSRP) >50% and those with an HSRP <50%. These two groups were then standardized based on percentile within the school and averaged using HSRP, MCAT, pre-clinical, step 1, clinical, and step 2 scores. A line chart was graphed to demonstrate the difference between the two groups. DATA/RESULTS: As might be expected, our results showed significantly higher MCAT scores from students who attended high-quality versus low-quality high schools. Our results also showed that although students from low-quality high schools performed worse for the first part of medical school, by step 2, students will score similarly in both groups. CONCLUSION: Students who performed poorly on the MCAT and attended lower-quality high schools will score as competitively as their peers by step 2.