Allergan Teams With a Cardinal Health Unit; PacifiCare Opens Carlsbad Facility
A team of researchers from the University of California, Irvine College of Medicine has gotten more money to continue looking into the link between the academic skills of medical residents and how those skills translate to teaching medical students.
Dr. Elizabeth Morrison, an assistant professor of family medicine, received a $240,000 award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to expand her research and look for ways to help medical residents improve instructional skills. The grant will allow Morrison to continue research for four years. Her next study will examine more closely how resident physicians and students interact in educational settings and whether other teaching models, like long-term training courses, may be effective tools to train residents as teachers.
Morrison’s team, in the first part of the study, found that when evaluated by senior staff physicians and medical students, medical residents’ teaching abilities were not connected with their abilities to perform in their chosen medical specialties. Results from that study appeared in the Aug. 11 edition of the American Journal of Medicine, an academic publication.
“Resident physicians provide a great deal of teaching for medical students, both in formal sessions and informal settings in which senior physicians are not present,” Morrison said in a news release.
Morrison said her study showed that “a great deal of knowledge” was lacking about the medical residents’ role as teachers. She said it also showed that academic medical centers would have to institute teacher training for residents to be more effective.
“Better teaching skills not only will help improve training of future doctors but will help residents interact with patients and the public as practicing physicians,” Morrison said.
Thirty second-year internal medicine residents at UCI Medical Center in Orange were videotaped during teaching sessions that involved leading medical students through patient examinations and interviews. A group of senior faculty members rated the residents on academic factors including clinical judgment, medical knowledge, interviewing and examination of skills and professionalism.
Morrison’s team found no correlation between academic abilities and the evaluation of teaching abilities. “What our study shows is that teaching skills probably need to be taught in a way that will balance the academic demands of residency with the need for more training in teaching,” she said.
Morrison’s colleagues included Dr. Lloyd Rucker, professor of internal medicine, Dr. Michael Prislin, professor of family medicine and Dr. Charissa Castro, instructor of internal medicine.
Allergan, Cardinal Unit Team Up
Allergan Inc., Irvine, entered a partnership with Allegiance Sant & #233; S.A., a subsidiary of Cardinal Health Inc. Under the deal, Allergan will sell to Allegiance Sant & #233; certain ophthalmic surgical products for inclusion in jointly labeled custom sterile surgical procedure packs. Allegiance Sant & #233; will be responsible for manufacturing and distributing the packs, and the companies will co-market the packs to ophthalmic surgeons in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Allergan provides eye care and specialty pharmaceutical products worldwide, such as contact lens care and ophthalmic surgical devices. Cardinal Health provides products and services that support the healthcare industry, including developing drug-delivery technologies and distributing pharmaceuticals.
Bits and Pieces:
Prescription Solutions, Santa Ana, officially opened its $25 million, 84,000-square-foot mail-order pharmacy warehouse in Carlsbad. Prescription Solutions, a subsidiary of PacifiCare Health Systems Inc., said the new facility would allow it to triple its order filling capacity … The California Nurses Association is running a “school for patient advocates” Sept. 17-20 in Berkeley. The association said in a news release that participants, among other things, “will discuss the future of the nursing profession, strategies to challenge the corporate healthcare chains and an action plan to reclaim the healthcare agenda for nurses and patients” … The University of California, Irvine Graduate School of Management is taking applications for its 2001 healthcare executive MBA program. Application deadline is Nov. 1, with classes starting in January. For more information, go to www.gsm.uci.edu/hc or call (949) 824-4622 … Thehealthchannel.com, Newport Beach, secured $500,000 in bridge financing from two independent investment groups … ChromaVision Medical Systems Inc., San Juan Capistrano, said it completed a fully blinded breast-cancer testing study with its automated cellular imaging system technology. The study was designed to look at accuracy and agreement among pathologists when ChromaVision’s technology was used to qualify patients for Herceptin pharmaceutical therapy. The study showed the ChromaVision systems increased doctors’ accuracy … Kaiser Permanente Orange County gave $10,000 to the Health Care Council of Orange County. The council will use the grant to support its nursing education program for “culturally competent” minority nursing students … The Center for Advanced Dentistry, Fullerton, said other cardiologists and dentists are using laser-assisted bacteria-reduction therapy for bad breath in order to reduce the risk of bacterial complications to heart, periodontal or other invasive surgeries.
