International Hackathon as a Tool to Augment Education, Collaboration, and Innovation in Global Neurosurgery.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Health care providers' exposure to global surgical disparities is limited in current nursing and/or medical school curricula. For instance, global health is often associated with infectious diseases or maternal health without acknowledging the growing need for surgical care in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We propose an international virtual hackathon based on neurosurgical patient cases in under-resourced settings as an educational tool to bring awareness to global surgical disparities and develop relationships among trainees in different countries. METHODS: Participants were recruited through email listservs, a social media campaign, and prize offerings. A 3-day virtual hackathon event was administered, which included workshops, mentorship, keynote panels, and pitch presentations to judges. Participants were presented with real patient cases and directed to solve a barrier to their care. Surveys assessed participants' backgrounds and event experience. The hackathon was executed through Zoom at Harvard Innovation Lab in Boston, MA, on March 25 to 27, 2022. Participants included medical students, with additional participants from business, engineering, or current health care workers. RESULTS: Three hundred seven applications were submitted for 100 spots. Participants included medical students, physicians, nurses, engineers, entrepreneurs, and undergraduates representing 25 countries and 82 cities. Fifty-one participants previously met a neurosurgeon, while 39 previously met a global health expert, with no difference between LMIC and high-income countries' respondents. Teams spent an average of 2.75 hours working with mentors, and 88% of postevent respondents said the event was "very" or "extremely conducive" to networking. Projects fell into 4 categories: access, language barriers, education and training, and resources. The winning team, which was interdisciplinary and international, developed an application that analyzes patient anatomy while performing physical therapy to facilitate remote care and clinical decision-making. CONCLUSION: An international virtual hackathon can be an educational tool to increase innovative ideas to address surgical disparities in LMICs and establish early collaborative relationships with medical trainees from different countries.

Why Competency Frameworks Are Insufficiently Nuanced for Health Equity Teaching and Assessment.

This article suggests how competency-based medical education should robustly integrate health equity by focusing on physicians' responsibilities to (1) know why and how underlying structural mechanisms contribute to health equity and then (2) take action to achieve health equity in their practice. This article first canvasses currently available frameworks for helping trainees cultivate these 2 specific skills of discernment and action. This article then offers strategies for teaching and assessing these skills in specific learning activities.

"A Look Under the Hood": Reflections on the Inaugural RIME Mentorship Program.

In 2021, Research in Medical Education (RIME) celebrated 60 years of advancing scholarship in health professions education (HPE). At that time, the nation's educational institutions faced a public reckoning on the long-standing pandemic of racism that sweltered in their practices and policies, laid bare by COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matters movement. RIME responded with a mentorship program for minoritized early career HPE faculty, which aims to amplify their voices in settings where their experiences and contributions are frequently dampened. The program fosters professional development through structured activities, participation as RIME committee interns, and formal mentorship channels to support career growth and offer experiences with scholarly publishing. This commentary was written by the first cohort of RIME mentees who are HPE scholars from various professions and diverse backgrounds with struggles traversing professional landscapes as immigrants and as individuals with minoritized identities and hopes for belonging in medical and educational institutions. In this commentary, the mentees describe the merits of the RIME mentorship program and what it meant to them and their unique marginalities. They also examine opportunities for improvements within the program to further reduce barriers faced by minoritized early career HPE faculty who often face limited support with scholarly activities.

Impact of an ambulatory care pharmacist on provider relative value units in a rural clinic.

Introduction: Collaborative team-based care models have been shown to improve the quality of care provided to patients and may increase productivity along with patient access to care. Productivity is often tracked via work relative value units (wRVU). The primary objective of this project was to evaluate how a collaborative practice model affects tracked productivity. Methods: Data regarding wRVU were retrospectively extracted from the electronic medical record from a single center. De-identified data points included total number of patients seen and level of service billed for the visit. Visits were grouped as collaborative (physician-pharmacist) or independent (physician alone). Relative value unit totals were calculated separately for individual physicians and pharmacy visits and also combined for collaborative team wRVU totals. Wilcoxon and descriptive statistics were used for analysis. All statistical analyses were performed using SAS v 9.4 (Cary, NC). Results: A total of 624 patient visits were reviewed. Total number of patients seen by physicians working in collaboration was on average 19.25 per day versus 12.9 per day for those working independently. When evaluating only the average per encounter wRVU for each provider removing collaborative patients, the three providers who worked in the collaborative model averaged 1.45, 1.48, and 1.55 wRVU per patient respectively, compared to those who worked singularly (1.37 and 1.30). This was found to be statistically significant in the unadjusted mixed model (P = 0.0476), but not maintained once adjusted. Conclusion: Physicians working in collaboration with a pharmacist were able to bill at a higher level on average suggesting more productivity.

HYPNOTIC RESPONSIVENESS AND NONHYPNOTIC SUGGESTIBILITY: DISPARATE, SIMILAR, OR THE SAME?

This study examined if participants respond to different types of suggestions, including hypnosis, uniquely or similarly. This study used 9 suggestibility measures and hypothesized a 3-factor model. It was hypothesized that hypnosis, Chevreul's pendulum, and body-sway would load on the first factor; the odor test, progressive weights, and placebo on the second factor; and conformity, persuasibility, and interrogative suggestibility would load on the third factor. The study comprised 110 college students. Factor analyses failed to result in three factors. Additional attempts at two and three-factor models were also rejected. Hypnosis had no strong relationship with the various suggestibility measures. Thus, no clearly delineated factor structure of suggestibility emerged, indicating that the domain of suggestibility seems to be neither a single attribute, trait, or group of related abilities. Implications are discussed.