Attending Physicians' Perspectives of Resident Academic Half Day

Phenomenon: Academic health centers face significant challenges trying to improve medical education while meeting patient care needs. In response to problems with traditional forms of didactic education, many residency programs have transitioned to Academic Half Day (AHD), a curricular model in which learning is condensed into half-day blocks. In this model, trainees have protected educational time free from clinical responsibilities. However, an understanding of the impact on attending physicians and patient care when residents depart clinical sites for learning activities has not been well described. We sought to explore attending physicians’ perspectives when residents depart clinical sites to attend AHD. Approach: We performed a qualitative study with a grounded theory approach using individual semistructured interviews (December 2016–April 2017) of attending physicians who worked at inpatient and emergency department clinical sites from which residents departed to attend AHD. We used the constant comparative method, generating codes using an iterative approach and continuing sampling until saturation was reached. Major themes were identified and disagreements were resolved by consensus. Findings: Fifteen attending physicians from 6 clinical services were interviewed. Data analysis yielded 5 themes: emotional strain of workload, technology and systems challenges, patient safety and care concerns, disrupted resident learning, and the challenge to optimize resident education. Attending physicians, already working on busy services, felt frustrated and perceived having an increased workload when residents departed for AHD. They were concerned about safely entering orders in the electronic health record, impeded patient workflow, and further disruption of resident schedules already disrupted by duty hour restrictions and continuity clinic. Attending physicians described the importance of experiential learning from caring for patients and from structured didactic learning; however, the optimal balance was uncertain. Insights: We found that attending physicians experienced significant emotional strain, faced technological challenges, and were concerned about impeded workflow and patient safety when residents departed clinical sites for AHD. This is likely to be true whenever residents are pulled out of the clinical setting for any reason. Educators need to partner with hospital administrators to provide appropriate support for attending physicians when residents leave clinical sites, evaluate the effectiveness of different educational models, and determine how structured learning activities fit into the overall curriculum.     

Neighborhood: A Conceptual Analysis

Researchers interested in measuring neighborhood‐level effects should understand how “neighborhood” is defined within nursing sciences and other sciences, and the inherent strengths and weaknesses of current research methodologies. This concept analysis provides clarity around the concept of neighborhood within the context of health, analyzes the current state of development of the neighborhood concept, and proposes areas for future nursing research. Using the Rodger's Method of analysis, the concept of neighborhood within nursing and public health research is described based on existing literature. The concept's attributes, related concepts, antecedents, and consequences are given from the literature. Comparisons of the use of neighborhood are made between nursing, public health, sociology, and other sciences. The evolution of the concept of neighborhood throughout history is described, and important implications for future research are discussed.     

Priming sentence comprehension in aphasia: effects of lexically independent and specific structural priming

Background & Aims: Impaired message-structure mapping results in deficits in both sentence production and comprehension in aphasia. Structural priming has been shown to facilitate syntactic production for persons with aphasia (PWA). However, it remains unknown if structural priming is also effective in sentence comprehension. We examined if PWA show preserved and lasting structural priming effects during interpretation of syntactically ambiguous sentences and if the priming effects occur independently of or in conjunction with lexical (verb) information.

Methods & Procedures: Eighteen PWA and 20 healthy older adults (HOA) completed a written sentence-picture matching task involving the interpretation of prepositional phrases (PP; the chef is poking the solider with an umbrella) that were ambiguous between high (verb modifier) and low attachment (object noun modifier). Only one interpretation was possible for prime sentences, while both interpretations were possible for target sentences. In Experiment 1, the target was presented immediately after the prime (0-lag). In Experiment 2, two filler items intervened between the prime and the target (2-lag). Within each experiment, the verb was repeated for half of the prime-target pairs, while different verbs were used for the other half. Participants’ off-line picture matching choices and response times were measured.

Results: After reading a prime sentence with a particular interpretation, HOA and PWA tended to interpret an ambiguous PP in a target sentence in the same way and with faster response times. Importantly, both groups continued to show this priming effect over a lag (Experiment 2), although the effect was not as reliable in response times. However, neither group showed lexical (verb-specific) boost on priming, deviating from robust lexical boost seen in the young adults of prior studies.

Conclusions: PWA demonstrate abstract (lexically-independent) structural priming in the absence of a lexically-specific boost. Abstract priming is preserved in aphasia, effectively facilitating not only immediate but also longer-lasting structure-message mapping during sentence comprehension.