Learning opportunities for Australian prevocational hospital doctors: exposure, perceived quality and desired methods of learning.

Objective:

To survey prevocational doctors working in Australian hospitals on aspects of postgraduate learning.
Participants and setting:

470 prevocational doctors in 36 health services in Australia, August 2003 to October 2004.
Design:

Cross-sectional cohort survey with a mix of ordinal multicategory questions and free text.
Main outcome measures:

Perceived preparedness for aspects of clinical practice; perceptions of the quantity and usefulness of current teaching and learning methods and desired future exposure to learning methods.
Results:

64% (299/467) of responding doctors felt generally prepared for their job, 91% (425/469) felt prepared for dealing with patients, and 70% (325/467) for dealing with relatives. A minority felt prepared for medicolegal problems (23%, 106/468), clinical emergencies (31%, 146/469), choosing a career (40%, 188/468), or performing procedures (45%, 213/469). Adequate contact with registrars was reported by 90% (418/465) and adequate contact with consultants by 56% (257/466); 20% (94/467) reported exposure to clinical skills training and 11% (38/356) to high-fidelity simulation. Informal registrar contact was described as useful or very useful by 94% (433/463), and high-fidelity simulation by 83% (179/216). Most prevocational doctors would prefer more formal instruction from their registrars (84%, 383/456) and consultants (81%, 362/447); 84% (265/316) want increased exposure to high-fidelity simulation and 81% (283/350) to professional college tutorials.
Conclusion:

Our findings should assist planning and development of training programs for prevocational doctors in Australian hospitals.

Playing Active Video Games may not develop movement skills: an intervention trial

Background: To investigate the impact of playing sports Active Video Games on children's actual and perceived object control skills. Methods: Intervention children played Active Video Games for 6. weeks (1. h/week) in 2012. The Test of Gross Motor Development-2 assessed object control skill. The Pictorial Scale of Perceived Movement Skill Competence assessed perceived object control skill. Repeated measurements of object control and perceived object control were analysed for the whole sample, using linear mixed models, which included fixed effects for group (intervention or control) and time (pre and post) and their interaction. The first model adjusted for sex only and the second model also adjusted for age, and prior ball sports experience (yes/no). Seven mixed-gender focus discussions were conducted with intervention children after programme completion. Results: Ninety-five Australian children (55% girls; 43% intervention group) aged 4 to 8. years (M 6.2, SD 0.95) participated. Object control skill improved over time (p=0.006) but there was no significant difference (p=0.913) between groups in improvement (predicted means: control 31.80 to 33.53, SED=0.748; intervention 30.33 to 31.83, SED=0.835). A similar result held for the second model. Similarly the intervention did not change perceived object control in Model 1 (predicted means: control: 19.08 to 18.68, SED=0.362; intervention 18.67 to 18.88, SED=0.406) or Model 2. Children found the intervention enjoyable, but most did not perceive direct equivalence between Active Video Games and 'real life' activities. Conclusions: Whilst Active Video Game play may help introduce children to sport, this amount of time playing is unlikely to build skill.