Serving underserved and hard-core smokers in a dental school setting

The dental profession has recognized tobacco cessation as an important part of comprehensive dental care, yet implementation of the Public Health Service clinical practice guideline on "Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence" remains a challenge. This is especially the case for patients presenting in dental clinics for whom smoking represents a large financial burden. Many of these smoking-addicted patients also present with multiple risk factors: dental, medical, and psychiatric. Innovative approaches are necessary to reduce barriers to providing smoking cessation services to underserved and high-risk smokers. A tobacco cessation clinic in a dental school setting provides an opportunity for dental students to learn about the management of difficult-to-treat cases and to bring their enhanced intervention skills back into the primary care dental setting. This paper describes a multidisciplinary approach to tobacco cessation in a dental school clinic within an academic medical center.     

A comprehensive performance-based assessment of fourth-year students' clinical skills

Written examinations are widely used for assessment in clinical clerkships and for licensure and specialty board certification, as opposed to assessment based on actual performance with patients. This reliance on written examinations is due to their ease of use and perceived objectivity and occurs despite the fact that the examinations assess few components of clinical competence. Simulated patients can standardize the presentation of a patient problem; and, if the patients are employed in an assessment in a manner parallel to the design of written test items, the assessment can have an objectivity similar to that enjoyed by written tests. Such an assessment allows the major components of clinical competence to be tested. The results and feasibility of using simulated patients in a multiple-station assessment of an entire senior class in January 1986 are described. A second assessment was administered to a different senior class in December 1986. This latter assessment was designed in collaboration with another medical school that administered the same assessment to its senior students in March 1987.     

The influence of aging on intestinal absorption of vitamin B12 and niacin in rats

The intestinal absorption of doses of vitamin B₁₂ and of niacin was examined in 6, 12, and 24 months old female Wistar rats. Rats were dosed via stomach tube with radioactive forms of the vitamins and were killed 16 hours later. Percent of the dose remaining in the stomach and gastro intestinal tract andthe collected feces was determined. Absorption of the two vitamins was not influenced by the age of the animals.     

Cerebral non-Langerhans cell histiocytosis in a 17-year-old patient with a headache: case report

Journal of Neurology -     

Making the most of Papua New Guinea’s biodiversity: Establishment of an integrated set of programs that link botanical survey with pharmacological assessment in “the land of the unexpected”

An integrated and coordinated set of programs has been established to meet International Cooperative Biodiversity Group (ICBG) goals in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Here we give an overview of the PNG ICBG and focus on the key elements and major steps taken to establish a program necessary for the pharmacological assessment of botanicals and traditional medicines in PNG and, by extrapolation, in other developing countries.