Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Introduction: The practice of teaching in the health sciences needs to be supported by the available body of scientific literature in education and the social sciences. Best Evidence Medical Education (BEME) has emerged as a movement that proposes the use of published evidence to inform medical education decisions and practice in academic health centers and medical schools. Its dissemination and implementation have been slow for a variety of reasons, there is a need to reflect on its advances and obstacles in the current educational arena.Objective: To provide an update and critical reflection on BEME. Method: Narrative review of the literature and critical essay on the subject using educational vignettes. The analysis was structured as follows: definition and history of BEME, similarities and differences with Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM), and current challenges and opportunities. Discussion: The use of published evidence in human activities (like medicine and education) is fraught with conceptual and practical difficulties. Many professionals base their educational practice decisions mostly in experience, being unaware of the enormous advances in the field and the broad scientific literature available to help inform their teaching and assessment activities. Medical schools and hospitals should acquire at least some basic health sciences education professional material (books, journals, databases), train their educators to search educational databases and critically appraise social sciences papers, and promote interdisciplinary collaborations with professionally trained education scholars. Conclusions: The BEME approach to educational scholarship and practice should be integrated in quality improvement initiatives in medical schools and academic health centers. Reflective teaching is essential for meaningful learning in the health professions.

This manuscript deals with an overview of the Delphi technique, from its origin to the stages that constitute the premise to achieve its goal: to reach a consensus among experts. The dynamics of the technique focus on a complex problem, hence resulting in a series of questions that will guide the coordinating group, analyzing and checking the flowing information between the expert group and the coordinating group. Within this process arises timely feedback, an important element in achieving a level of agreement among experts. The technique is useful for research in the area of the health sciences, one of the strengths of this technique is not requiring the presence of the experts, and the dynamics of information management is handled through postal mail or Internet. Experts in the field of health sciences are often professionals with full and complex agendas, but through the use of communication technologies it is possible to have them contribute their judgments and opinions in an efficient manner, making it possible to complete this type of research projects.

The paper shows in a detailed manner what is a research poster and its main parts. It provides the main elements for planning and offers useful advice for its appropriate presentation. It shows the criteria for poster evaluation to be taken into account, and concludes with an example outline of how the information presented in a poster might be distributed.

Introduction: The end-of-career Professional Exam is a high-stakes summative assessment done at UNAM’s Faculty of Medicine in Mexico, to certify that undergraduate medical students have achieved the knowledge level required to enter practice as a general physician. One source of validity evidence is the exam’s internal structure, studied with item analysis. Classical Measurement Theory (CMT) has traditionally been used for this purpose, but it has several disadvantages that Item Response Theory (IRT) intends to solve. This report describes the use of the IRT model in the analysis of the written Professional Exam at UNAM’s Faculty of Medicine.Objective: To explore the benefits of using the IRT model to obtain validity evidence for a high-stakes achievement test in a medical school.Method: A psychometric analysis of the written Professional Exam at UNAM’s Faculty of Medicine was performed in 2008. The test was a written 420-item multiple-choice question exam that covers Internal medicine, Pediatrics, Obstetrics and gynecology, Emergency medicine, Surgery and Family medicine. CMT elements were calculated: reliability, difficulty and discrimination. The three-parameter IRT model was used. With these calculations the best items were selected, and the length of the test was estimated with Spearman-Brown’s prophecy formula.Results: The exam was taken by 882 medical students, had mean difficulty index of 0.55 and reliability of 0.93. With the 3pl-IRT model, it was found that the test was particularly informative in ability levels close to the mean in the theta scale. The average discrimination parameter (a) was 0.67, the difficulty parameter (b) was 1.21, and the seudo-guessing parameter (c) was 0.18. A shortened version of the test (250 items) was designed using the information obtained, maintaining a high reliability. A majority of the items in the original test (84%) had a good fit to the 3pl-IRT model, and in the shortened version almost all of them (97%) had an appropriate model fit.Discussion and conclusions: The written Professional Test at UNAM’s Faculty of Medicine fulfills the conceptual requirements (item number, examinees’ sample size) to apply the IRT model in its item analysis. This information augments the validity evidence of the exam’s score inferences and interpretations, and provides a psychometric panorama of the instrument that is useful to plan subsequent versions of the exam. The exam can be reduced in length making it more efficient, without losing precision in the estimation of the subjects’ ability level or content validity.

Background: There is little published evidence regarding the computer literacy of students entering medical schools in Mexico. Several authors argue that a low level of computer literacy prevents students from using technology to its fullest potential and is detrimental to their education. Additionally, there are still a large number of physicians that lack computer skills. Some variables that have been linked to low computing skill levels include the following: inappropriate training and support by teachers, lack of student motivation, socioeconomic level, gender, and no personal computer.Objective: The objective of this paper is to identify the level of computer literacy of students and the time of admission into the bachelor of medicine program at UNAM.Methods: An observational, descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted in first-year students of the Faculty of Medicine at UNAM in the city of Mexico. The inclusion criteria included students who were enrolled in their first year of the program in 2010 and who agreed to participate in the study. We applied a questionnaire with proven validity and reliability created by a group of researchers that was based on a review of the literature and included eight categories of computer literacy. We adjusted a hierarchical linear model to investigate how the school of origin and personal variables such as age and sex were related to knowledge and computer skills. The research protocol for this study was approved by the committee of ethics and research of the Faculty of Medicine at UNAM. Results: We assessed 1135 students and obtained a response rate of 94.4% of students enrolled in first-year bachelor of medicine program in 2010. The average was 77%. Conclusions: The reported knowledge and computer skill of the students was sufficient, suggesting that students have the necessary competencies for academic success in undergraduate medical courses that require computer literacy.

Introduction: This is a time use study carried out to learn about the academic performance of medical students and the duration of their activities.Objective: Identify associations between academic problems and the condition of being an irregular student (re-attendants to courses due to a failure mark).Material and methods: A descriptive and comparative study was carried out. A questionnaire with 103 closed questions was designed. All the undergraduate students of the Faculty of Medicine, UNAM, were invited to answer the questionnaire in a self-administered and anonymous way between October and December 2008. Contingency tables were constructed and measures of association were calculated to determine if being or not an irregular student is related to the time devoted to different daily activities.Results: A total of 3029 undergraduate medical students answered the questionnaire; 84% freshmen (1309 out of 1555), 73% second year students (682 out of 927), 94% third year students (806 out of 850), and 66% fourth year students (531 out of 802). Only 13% re-attendants were interviewed most of them were women (70.2%) and on their first academic year (80.7%). Also 50.6% of the re-attendants and 17.2% of the regular students had an overall mark less than seven (p=0.00). A 5% significant association was found between being or not a regular student and seeking for additional printed or electronic textbooks, looking for assistance to organize their time, and having difficulties in understanding medical texts or in performing clinical procedures. Irregular students were unsure to finish their careers and, compared to regular students, enjoyed less their academic activities. Conclusions: Re-attendants had poor cognitive and technical skills as well as logistic problems that hindered a solution to their low academic performance and lack of motivation. Irregular students need advice in areas such as reading comprehension, time management and academic incentive.

AbstractThis article review the need to reform structures and forms of organization at national universities to adapt to the challenges of a changing world where developments in science and technology, as well as access and distribution of information through the Internet, impact human capital formation and requires universities training more qualified human resources. From the review of the construct “Complex Learning”, this article provides a global perspective on its main components and, by way of illustration, we present an empirical national structurally modeled cognitive mechanisms (beliefs and cognitive strategies) and self-regulatory (attributional and motivational) variables of the learner, content and context (presence or virtual) that shaped the psychological theoretical study. The results showed that learning was generated by complex interactions between these variables where: the implementation of unsuccessful students was predicted by naive epistemological beliefs and poor cognitive strategies - self-regulatory, whereas successful students was by self-regulatory strategies and cognitive strategies that allow students to be “active agent” of their own knowledge, as well as reflective epistemological beliefs about knowledge and the way they are learning. With regard to the context of instruction, it was confirmed that learning is most influenced by the instructional method used than the face or virtual context used. The effects of the interaction content - context showed more and better learning when students used self-regulatory strategies relating to the person-based context, and self-regulation of materials for the virtual context, also identified a trend in which perceptual contents were learned better online. On this basis, we discuss implications of this research to other disciplines.

The importance of the conceptual framework underlying research is emphasized, beginning with the researchers own position, so some characteristics that favor the development of a good study are reviewed. An analysis of existing literature on the subject to be investigated is suggested, taking into account different perspectives: theory or theories that aim to explain the problem, related to education, teaching and learning a subject, a skill or competence; the most appropriate design to test the learning model proposed; the strategy most appropriate to asses learning content and objectives; the analysis of data collected that will favor the acceptance or rejection of assumptions made in the study to be carried out. It gives a very general view of the type of documents to review, and the order in which it must be done, to ensure that the scientist has sufficient information to develop a good research project. It is recommended to start the search from the most recent information and then backwards, as long as necessary. It also helps the researcher to clarify his intentions, refine hypotheses, establish the type of relationship he is looking for among the variables of interest, and test them in the best manner, assuring both theoretical and methodological quality, and highlight the need to answer the research question that arose by virtue of its social and educational importance, and also establishing that these sources have been available for a long time now.

“Los dioses condenaron a Sísifo a rodar sin cesar unaroca hasta la cima de una montaña, de donde la piedracaería de nuevo por su propio peso una y otra vez.Pensaron por alguna razón que no hay castigo másespantoso que la labor fútil y sin esperanza”Albert Camus En la mitología griega Sísifo fue fundador y rey de Corinto y, como consecuencia de una serie de acciones ilícitas, fue condenado a empujar una piedra enorme cuesta arriba por una ladera empinada. Antes de que la piedra alcanzara la cima de la montaña, rodaba hacia abajo por su propio peso, y Sísifo tenía que empezar de nuevo la tarea desde el principio. En el lenguaje coloquial, se ha comparado la tarea de Sísifo con labores inútiles y aparentemente eternas, como a veces parecieran las labores de mejoría de calidad en educación. ¡De ninguna manera quiero decir que el realizar trabajos de investigación en educación en ciencias de la salud, y el proceso de escritura y publicación subsecuente, sean análogos al castigo de Sísifo, aunque a veces el lector así lo sienta!

Medical Science Educator es una publicación, con revisión por pares, de la Asociación Internacional de Educadores en Ciencias Médicas (IAMSE). Esta publicación ofrece a todos los educadores del área en la atención de la salud, la información más actualizada para el éxito en su actividad, al publicar actividades, opiniones y recursos académicos en educación en ciencias médicas. Los artículos publicados se enfocan en enseñar las ciencias que son el fundamento de la  edicina y la salud modernas e incluyen la educación en ciencia básica, enseñanza clínica, y el uso de las tecnologías modernas en la educación.La revista es un beneficio de la membresía en IAMSE, pero se puede adquirir como suscripción individual o bibliotecaria.