Twelve tips for implementing a community of practice for faculty development

Abstract

Teaching and learning practices often fail to incorporate new concepts in the ever-evolving field of medical education. Although medical education research provides new insights into curricular development, learners’ engagement, assessment methods, professional development, interprofessional education, and so forth, faculty members often struggle to modernize their teaching practices. Communities of practice (CoP) for faculty development offer an effective and sustainable approach for knowledge management and implementation of best practices. A successful CoP creates and shares knowledge in the context of a specific practice toward the development of expertise. CoPs’ collaborative nature, based on the co-creation of practical solutions to daily problems, aligns well with the goals of applying best practices in health professions education and training new faculty members. In our article, we share 12 tips for implementing a community of practice for faculty development. The tips were based on a comprehensive literature review and the authors’ experiences.     

Über Frauenmilch und Menstruation

European Journal of Pediatrics -     

Defektadaptierte Versorgung azetabulärer Knochendefekte mit dem Revisio-System

Background

Many different systems for the management of primary and secondary acetabular defects are available, each with its inherent advantages and disadvantages. The Revisio-System is a press-fit oval mono-block implant that makes a defect-oriented reconstruction and restoration of the center of rotation possible.

Material and methods

In this study, we retrospectively reviewed the outcome of 92 consecutive patients treated with this oval press-fit cup due to periacetabular bone loss. The average follow-up was 58.2 months. Defects were classified according to D’Antonio. There were 39 type II, 38 Type III, and 15 type IV defects. After an average of 4.9 years, the implant survival rate was 94.6% with cup revision as the end point and 89.1% with revision for any reason as the end point. The Harris Hip Score increased from 41.1 preoperatively to 62.3 postoperatively. The mean level of pain measured with the Visual Analogue Scale (VSA) was reduced from 6.9 preoperatively to 3.8 postoperatively.

Results

The Revisio-System represents a promising toolbox for defect-orientated reconstruction of acetabular bone loss in revision hip arthroplasty. Our results demonstrate that the implantation of the Revisio-System can result in a good mid-term clinical outcome.

     

Integrated PET/CT: current applications and future directions

For the past 5 years, combined positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography (CT), or PET/CT, has grown because the PET portion provides information that is very different from that obtainable with other imaging modalities. However, the paucity of anatomic landmarks on PET images makes a consistent "hardware fusion" to anatomic cross-sectional data extremely useful. Clinical experience indicates a single direction: Addition of CT to PET improves specificity foremost, but also sensitivity, and the addition of PET to CT adds sensitivity and specificity in tumor imaging. Thus, PET/CT is a more accurate test than either of its individual components and is probably also better than side-by-side viewing of images from both modalities. The synergistic advantage of adding CT is that the attenuation correction needed for PET can also be derived from the CT data, an advantage not obtainable by integrating PET and magnetic resonance imaging. This makes PET/CT 25%-30% faster than PET alone with standard attenuation-correction methods, leading to higher patient throughput and a more comfortable examination, which typically last 30 minutes or less. Fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET/CT appears to provide relevant information in the staging and therapy monitoring of many tumors, including lung carcinoma, mesothelioma, colorectal cancer, lymphoma, melanoma, and many others, with the notable exception of prostatic cancer. For prostatic cancer, choline derivatives may become useful radiopharmaceuticals. The published literature on the applications of FDG PET/CT in oncology is still limited, but several well-designed studies have demonstrated the benefits of PET/CT.