Do workshops make a difference in improving the capability of physicians?

Continuing medical education (CME) activities have been shown to improve the capability and capacity of physicians for appropriate management of their patients. However, doubts have been raised about the role of workshops and seminars. This study is an attempt to find out whether workshops can improve the knowledge (capability) of practicing physician. Participants of 10 randomly selected workshops conducted in whole of Sindh were included for this study. A pre-test followed by post-test methodology used for 214 participants demonstrated that physicians' knowledge increased for some of the basic facts after attending the workshop. However, when their knowledge was assessed with some problem-solving approach, no significant (P < 0.05) change could be noted. It is recommended that workshops should be designed and conducted more carefully. Besides, some innovative approaches for CME should be compared with 'workshops' approach to determine their effectiveness.     

The relationship between cigarette smoking and the risk of endometrial neoplasms

A series of therapeutic and educational workshops were conducted with women nursing home residents with the twin goals of improving self-esteem and self-reliance, and facilitating community building and networking. Alongside these workshops were nursing home staff trainings whereby staff were encouraged to articulate their needs and those of resident women in productive ways.     

Attrition behavior before career development workshops.

Examined differences between 130 persons (mean age 31.6 yrs) who attended career workshops and 56 persons (mean age 27.0 yrs) who registered but did not attend. Nonattenders were interviewed after workshops, and reasons expressed for nonattendance were clustered into 3 categories: 45% had forgotten or felt discouraged; 38% gave environmental reasons (e.g., scheduling and transportation problems); and 17% indicated that they had already met their goals. These 3 attrition groups were each compared with the group who attended workshops on a series of variables obtained at the time of registration, which included the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory and checklists on values and abilities. The forgot/discouraged group had lower self-esteem and participated in fewer information-seeking activities. Ss in the environmental-barriers group were similar to Ss who attended on all measures except career decidedness; the environmental-barriers group was more decided. Nonattenders who indicated they had met their goals had higher ratings of career decidedness, more information-seeking behaviors, greater self-esteem, and higher academic orientation. Results support the notion that reasons for nonattendance at career workshops vary, requiring different interventions to increase attendance. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

创建精品车间的探索与实践

介绍了精品车间的内涵及特点,济钢在各二级单位开展了创建精品车间的工作,通过形成精品车间标准、明确创建流程、创新评价方式、建立六大保障机制,培育形成了一批在基层落实企业发展战略的车间典范,达到了精准管理有效落实、学习创新能力显著提升、团队绩效更加突出等创建效果。     

Developing a computer workshop to facilitate computer skills and minimize anxiety for early childhood educators.

Early childhood educators (n=133) were assigned to 1 of 3 instructional conditions (direct, guided discovery, or no-exposure control) to assess the impact of computer workshops on their level of computer anxiety, computer knowledge, and comfort with computer technology. Groups were matched for computer experience and anxiety, early childhood education (ECE) experience, and ECE center. The direct and guided discovery groups attended a 3-hr hands-on workshop covering hardware, software, and Internet material. Immediately after the workshops, computer anxiety was lower and comfort with computer technology increased. Six months later, the control group had reduced computer anxiety, but the other groups maintained greater knowledge and comfort. Direct instruction reduced computer anxiety slightly but did not promote the acquisition of information of the guided condition. Overall, workshops provided gains that could translate into more effective and efficient computer use in the classroom. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Internship Workshops on Psychopathology: Bridging the Academic-Clinical Gap.

Reports on a brief orientation program designed to familiarize new interns with some of the major signs of psychopathology they will encounter and to help bridge gaps in training for individual interns. The orientation consists of four 1-day workshops focusing on the areas of depression, suicide and hospitalization, schizophrenia, and neuropsychological problems. Completing these intensive workshop experiences provides a brief overview of psychopharmacology and a short introduction to the evaluation process of child problems. The workshops are regarded as important both for the interns and the staff. As the interns become more curious and less defensive about beginning their clinical rotations, the staff become less frustrated about handling the interns' anxieties concerning their lack of preparation for the internship year. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparative Study of Idea Generation between Traditional Value Management Workshops and GDSS-Supported Workshops

Value management (VM) has been widely used to meet challenges arising from the construction industry. However, it has also encountered some problems such as passive participation in VM workshops and a lack of time and information to complete all tasks in the workshops. A group decision support system (GDSS), entitled interactive value management system (IVMS), has been developed by the writers to overcome these problems. This paper starts with an introduction to GDSS and a critical review of technologies used in the process of idea generation in VM workshops. This is followed by findings of a laboratory experiment designed to compare the productivity of traditional brainstorming and brainstorming with IVMS support in VM workshops. The results of the experiment showed that IVMS has a positive influence on idea generation in VM workshops. Finally, the implications of the study and directions for future research are discussed.     

Pedagogy of Teaching Value Management in Postgraduate Construction and Property Program

As value management (VM) has been increasingly applied to enhance value in public construction projects, the core subject entitled “Value Management for Construction and Property” is being offered to postgraduate students in the Department of Building and Real Estate at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Under the new outcome-based curriculum, the learning outcomes, pedagogy of teaching VM, and activities of the VM workshops for the subject are described in this paper. The results of a questionnaire survey of the students’ feedback on the performance of the workshops for the academic year 2007–2008 are presented and discussed. Students believed that value management workshops are essential in the curriculum. They expressed that it was a valuable experience to participate in the VM workshop which enabled them to have a better understanding of the subject. Some improvement is also recommended for future organization and management of workshops based on the lessons learned in these workshops.     

Promoting scope of professional practice in a large organisation

The UKCC's Scope of Professional Practice document opened up major opportunities for nurses, but many have problems relating its principles to their everyday practice. This article describes how workshops were held in a large teaching trust to raise nurses' awareness of the document.     

Guidelines for planning faculty development workshops

This article presents guidelines for developing workshops based on practical experience and a review of the literature. Health science faculty tend to prefer workshops as a method of learning. However, the success of a workshop depends on thoughtful planning. The needs and expectations of participants should be thoroughly assessed. Workshop leaders must be competent, enthusiastic, and flexible; they must create a successful adult learning environment, especially for professionals with teaching experience. Evaluation of workshops should include both formative and summative methods.     

Charrettes as a Method for Engaging Industry in Best Practices Research

Gaining innovative and useful research findings concerning construction industry best practices requires an interaction and feedback mechanism between industry respondents and academia. Typical research methods such as surveys, source document reviews, and structured interviews will work, but suffer from barriers which can hamper results. Examples of these barriers include low response rates, asynchronous communication, time commitment of the researchers and respondents, access to project data, and travel costs. Structured workshops (research “charrettes”) are a unique and useful method for facilitating data collection between industry respondents and academic researchers. They combine the best tenets of surveys, interviews, and focus groups in an accelerated time frame. This paper will explain how these workshops provide a critical avenue for industry interaction. Characteristics leading to successful charrettes will be outlined. The paper will conclude by describing the benefits of these workshops to researchers including lessons learned from successful workshops.     

Participatory and Collaborative Learning with TELD Courseware Engine

TELD stands for “Teaching by Examples and Learning by Doing.” It unifies what have been widely known as case method (CM), problem-based learning (PBL), and project-based learning (PBL) in business, medical, and engineering education, respectively. Two key premises of successful TELD are student participation and collaboration. It is usually resource intensive to accomplish these two premises. The number of teachers/tutors required to facilitate seminars and workshops within small groups is obviously greater than that to give formal lectures to large classes. This requirement restricts the adoption of the TELD method in educational establishments where resources are increasingly stretched already. The TELD courseware engine has been developed with an intention to overcome this limitation. A variety of facilities are provided for the groups and teams to plan their learning activities, to indicate the roles and responsibilities of team members, and to indicate when and what individual members should do and how they should integrate their findings through teamwork in the form of workshops or meetings. This paper discusses and explains these online TELD facilities for enabling student involvement and collaboration.     

Psychology in the States.

Prior to and during the recent 1956 APA convention in Chicago, the Conference of State Psychological Associations sponsored a number of workshops and panels. Of the workshops, two, the one on certification and licensure and the one on public information, are summarized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nitric oxide protection of rat liver from lipid peroxidation, collagen accumulation, and liver damage induced by carbon tetrachloride

The evaluation of continuing medical education (CME) courses will soon become one of the tools used to assess post-graduate training, particularly in compliance with the recent legislation. In 1997, the organization committee of the French congress of pneumology decided to analyze the different methodologies used to assess the congress CME courses. The analysis was based on a satisfaction questionnaire, a before-after assessment of 4 workshops, and a comparison between participants and non-participants in 3 plenary sessions. Mann-Whitney and Wilcoxon non-parametric tests were used for statistical analysis. Satisfaction scores were high. For the plenary sessions, test results were better for participants than for the non-participant controls and for the workshops, test results were higher after completion. This type of study can only evaluate the level of knowledge acquired and is subject to a selection bias. It cannot analyze the practical impact of the courses nor their effect on patient health. Such assessment methodologies should be used more widely in order to improve future training sessions.     

Developing effective interactions to improve breastfeeding outcomes

The objective of this replicated research was to assess the effectiveness of antenatal Breastfeeding Workshops (Jamieson 1990) in improving breastfeeding outcomes. It was a longitudinal study using a pre-test/post-test design to evaluate any increase in the confidence, skill and knowledge of women and midwives. The research was carried out in the maternity section of a large Tasmanian teaching hospital. Fifty-six midwives who attended the workshops became the research group with 49 non-attendees as the control. Of the 159 women who indicated an interest in attending, 107 who attended formed the research group, and the remaining 52 were used as the control. The paper is in two parts. The first describes responses from midwives. The results show those midwives who attended a workshop perceived an increase in their confidence level in supporting mothers to breastfeed, altered their perception of those factors most important in successful breastfeeding, and acknowledged that updating of breastfeeding knowledge is necessary on an annual basis. The second part analyses breastfeeding outcomes in respondent women. The results show that women who attended the workshops had a significant increase in confidence levels associated with breastfeeding, and were more likely (p < 0.01) to breastfeed for an extended time even though they experienced difficulties.     

Workshop on sexuality and its effectiveness as an alternative to sexual education directed to adolescents

We present the experience accumulated during 3 years of having performed 10 workshops related to the topics of Sexuality and Affection, offered to 175 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 19 years, from public schools within the Panamá, City Metropolitan Area and who correspond to different socioeconomical strata. Analytical information provided from the results of two questionnaires related to knowledge about the two topics, applied prior to and after the workshops is also offered.     

Behaviorally specific inhibition of sham feeding by amylin

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES: To present a model for a series of workshops designed to improve the ability of oncology nurses to understand and fulfill culturally based needs of racially and ethnically diverse patients with cancer. DATA SOURCES: Published literature and author experience. DATA SYNTHESIS: Most nurses work with patients from a variety of ethnic or cultural backgrounds yet know little of how this affects patients' cancer experiences. Four workshops were presented that focused on the most common ethnic groups in the geographic area. A content template was developed that worked well to ensure complete topic coverage. CONCLUSIONS: Workshops were well-received. Nurses identified barriers to care and interventions that are appropriate for diverse patient populations. The follow-up survey indicated that some anticipated program outcomes may not be feasible if attendees do not regularly work with target populations. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE: The model can be modified for use in any geographic area. Such workshops should be repeated at regular intervals.     

Collaboration of a university and state mental health agency: Curriculum for improving services for children.

We describe the collaboration of a state university and a state mental health agency in implementing training to improve skills of community mental health center staff for working with children, adolescents, and their families. The project consisted of three phases: (a) a needs assessment survey was conducted, (b) a series of written instructional modules were developed, and (c) workshops were conducted in six locations across the state. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Constructive processing in children's event memory.

To examine effects of general event knowledge on specific event memories, nursery-school and kindergarten children participated in either 1 creative movement workshop (the episodic condition) or 4 workshops (the repeated condition), and recalled the workshops 4 weeks later. One half of the children also recalled the workshops on the same day. It was predicted that recall in the repeated condition would be more complete, better organized, but less accurate than in the episodic condition because of constructive processing. Results confirmed that (a) children recalled more from the first workshop (but not the last) in the repeated condition, (b) kindergarten children's recall in the repeated condition was better sequenced, and (c) more intrusions were reported in the repeated condition. Furthermore, (d) children recalled more activities with age, and (e) recall practice and specific cues increased amount, but not accuracy, of recall. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)