Nutan Atre Vaidya

Relationship Between Specialty Choice and Medical Student Temperament and Character Assessed With Cloninger Inventory

Background: Multiple variables affect medical specialty choice, including temperament, sociodemographic factors, and personal experiences. Many studies address specific variables for specific specialties, but few assess the relative impact of each factor. Purpose: To identify the relative influence of temperament in choosing a specialty. Methods: A sociodemographic and personal experiences questionnaire and a 240-question temperament and character inventory was distributed to 682 medical students. Their scores for 6 medical specialties were examined using analyses of variance, multivariate analyses of variance, and discriminant analysis. Results: Students choosing surgery, emergency medicine, and obstetrics and gynecology were higher on novelty seeking than other students. Future surgeons were lower in harm avoidance and reward dependence (RD) than the others. Students choosing primary care specialties, emergency medicine, and obstetrics and gynecology were all high on RD; with pediatrics being highest. Students differed from college students, the women differed from the men, and the Asian Americans differed from the other groups. Conclusion: The implications of these findings are discussed for career counseling and future research.

The failure of the schizophrenia concept and the argument for its replacement by hebephrenia: applying the medical model for disease recognition.

The present DSM and ICD delineations of schizophrenia do not identify homogeneous populations, and patients with different presentations satisfy the official criteria. Treatment response, illness course, and biological findings vary widely, indicating heterogeneity and not a common pathophysiology. The DSM ⁄ ICD construct of schizophrenia does not meet the standard of the medical model. This model for disease recognition delineates syndromes and then attempts to validate them by course and prognosis, response to treatment, and laboratory tests that ultimately lead to a clear picture of the pathophysiology and its etiology. This model has been successfully employed for centuries (1). We examine the historical record and empirical data for schizophrenia from this perspective and find that hebephrenia is a more homogeneous construct with distinctive and reliably identified clinical features and better fits the application of the medical model.

POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER IS ASSOCIATED WITH INCREASED INCIDENCE OF INSULIN RESISTANCE AND METABOLIC SYNDROME

Insulin resistance (IR) increases atherogenesis and atherosclerotic plaque instability and further increases risk of myocardial infarction, but its potential association with Post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD) has not been evaluated. This study assessed the association of PTSD with incidence of IR

Isolated inability to write cursively after transient ischemic attack (TIA).

ObjectiveTo examine the different aspects of language and its representation in the brain. BackgroundApractic agraphia, a form of mechanical agraphia, is produced by lesions in the left superior parietal lobe. However, little is known about the dissociation between allographic level representations for cursive writing and printing. MethodA 78-year-old right-handed patient with a history of transient ischemic attack was evaluated by interview, neurologic and neuropsychiatric examination, neuropsychologic testing, speech and language evaluation, and functional neuroimaging (single photon emission computed tomography). ResultsThe patient exhibited a disorder strictly limited to cursive writing resulting from ischemic damage to parietal and occipital lobes bilateral. ConclusionsThese findings support the assertion that printing and cursive writing are represented differentially and an isolated deficit in any of them can be the only presentation of disorder of language organization, secondary to brain damage in left superior parietal area.

A comparison of personality characteristics of patients with posttraumatic stress disorders and substance dependence: Preliminary findings

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Finch University of Health Sciences/The Chicago Medical School, and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, North Chicago, Illinois. Reprints: Nutan Atre Vaidya, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, FUHS/The Chicago Medical School, 3333 Green Bay Road, North Chicago, IL 60064. E-mail: vaidyan@finchcms.edu. Copyright

GENDER-SPECIFIC ASSOCIATION OF DEPRESSION WITH HIGH LEVELS OF C REACTIVE PROTEIN AND CORONARY ATHEROSCLEROSIS: A ANALYSIS OF MESA STUDY COHORT

Depression and coronary heart disease(CHD) are leading contributors to disease burden in women. While depression is related to a higher risk of developing CHD, its mechanism is unclear. This study investigates the relation of the severity of depression with the presence of coronary artery calcium(

Abstracts from the Proceedings of the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Association of Directors of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry (ADMSEP)

The Association of Directors of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry (ADMSEP) had its 30th Annual Meeting in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, June 24 to June 26, 2004. Abstracts were selected by a subcommittee of the ADMSEP Executive Council based on the quality and originality of the work and its presentation, its suitability to abstract form, and its general interest to readers of Teaching and Learning in Medicine. As these abstracts reflect, the 2004 Annual Meeting focused on new directions in education, especially on curricular innovation, interdisciplinary teaching in psychiatry, and integration of neuroscience into psychiatry curricula. Consistent with the national trend, a plenary session was devoted to objectives and competencies as they relate to medical student education. Several workshops were devoted to practical issues in teaching medical students, such as how to make these interactions engaging and motivating, and how to use electronic resources. The impact of todays capitalist society on health and psychiatric education was addressed in a special presentation by Dr. Frederick Sierles.