Scott Diener

Critical factors in career decision making for women medical graduates

Background  Within the next 30 years there will be equal numbers of women and men in the medical workforce. Indications are that women are increasing their participation in specialties other than general practice, although at a slower rate than their participation in the workforce as a whole. To inform those involved in training and employment of medical women, this study investigated the influencing factors in career decision making for female medical graduates.

Learning style and laparoscopic experience in psychomotor skill performance using a virtual reality surgical simulator

BACKGROUND People learn in different ways, and training techniques and technologies should accommodate individual learning needs. This pilot study looks at the relationship between learning style, as measured with the Multiple Intelligences Developmental Assessment Scales (MIDAS), laparoscopic surgery experience and psychomotor skill performance using the MIST VR surgical simulator. METHODS Five groups of volunteer subjects were selected from undergraduate tertiary students, medical students, novice surgical trainees, advanced surgical trainees and experienced laparoscopic surgeons. Each group was administered the MIDAS followed by two simulated surgical tasks on the MIST VR simulator. RESULTS There was a striking homogeny of learning styles amongst experienced laparoscopic surgeons. Significant differences in the distribution of primary learning styles were found (P < .01) between subjects with minimal surgical training and those with considerable experience. A bodily-kinesthetic learning style, irrespective of experience, was associated with the best performance of the laparoscopic tasks. CONCLUSION This is the first study to highlight the relationship between learning style, psychomotor skill and laparoscopic surgical experience with implications for surgeon selection, training and credentialling.

Collaborative Practice Through Simulations in a Multiuser Virtual Environment

Content delivery and clinical education methods have been changing over the last decade in nearly all health professions. Nowhere is this more evident than in the clinical aspects of nursing education. Although nursing has a history of significant clinical experience in its educational programs, schools are increasingly faced Key Points: •Second Life as a platform for collaborative teaching •Developing a collaborative Second Life Simulation •Piloting a clinical simulation in the United States and New Zealand with challenges related to limited clinical placement availability. Many schools of nursing are beginning to explore alternative means of providing a strong clinical component to their courses while maintaining high quality. Along with the use of clinical simulation in laboratories housed on campus, there has also been the adoption of the use of virtual environments as a potential platform for clinical simulation. The use of multiuser virtual environments (MUVEs) has garnered considerable attention by clinicians and educators and is beginning to grow in popularity and practicality for many professions. Among these MUVEs, Second Life (SL), created by Linden Lab (San Francisco, CA), has emerged as one of the most popular environments, with more than 15 million account-registered users and about 1 million active users (users who log in at least once per week). Using a basic free account, users are able to gain a sense of presence by creating a representation of themselves called an avatar. Using the avatar, they are able to interact with spaces, objects, and each other in a real-time environment.