Amy Baldwin

Care partners of people living with dementia (PLWD) report significantly higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression than non-care partners. Mindfulness-based programs improve overall well-being, but little research has evaluated the impact of emotional resilience programs for care partners of PLWD. This study reports the design and implementation of a pilot emotional resilience training initiative for care partners of PLWD. Three sessions were held at a monthly care partner support group. Emotional regulation skills were assessed using self-recorded emotional shifts before and after resilience practices. The feasibility and acceptability of the program was assessed using feedback collected through a post-survey and focus session. After participating in resilience practices, 82% of participants reported experiencing increased positive emotion. Most participants plan to use the program tools in the future and agree that their overall well-being improved after the training. Participants also noted that this program would be impactful for other care partners. The findings of this pilot study provide evidence that emotional resilience training may be a beneficial support strategy for care partners of PLWD.

Medical students face tremendous challenges during their medical training. To better support our medical learners, we should create institutional culture that promotes well-being and provides students with tools needed to prioritize their mental, emotional, and physical health. This guide offers considerations for co-creating and implementing a culture of well-being at medical institutions with an emphasis on team building, leadership, engagement, adaptability, and sustainability. When learners are supported in an institution that values well-being, positive impacts include improved performance and resilience, increasing the likelihood of training medical professionals who are equipped to provide humanistic healthcare.

While there has been an explosion of interest in the use of generative AI (GenAI) applications in medical education over the past 2 years, relatively little is understood about how health professions students are using this technology. This study aimed to answer these questions by surveying students about their GenAI use. Unsurprisingly, this survey revealed that many students were indeed using these applications, most often for information retrieval.

Feedback is an essential part of continuous quality improvement of cases used in medical curricula. This report describes results of qualitative analysis of feedback to elucidate what worked well and what needed improvement from the lens of our pre-clerkship medical students. Complexity, realism, and use of media were themes identified as strengths. Increasing the complexity, realism, and media as well as clarifying test results were themes for suggested improvements. While some feedback themes were similar across pre-clerkship years, others differed between first- and second-year students, likely representing the evolution of our learners.

Gender gaps in academic performance have been reported at a variety of educational levels including several national standardized exams for medical education, with men scoring higher than women. These gaps potentially impact medical school acceptance and residency matching and may be influenced by curricular design. Performance data for our 4-year integrated hybrid curriculum, which features a large proportion of active learning, revealed a gender gap with men performing better early in the curriculum and on the first national standardized exam. This gap in performance almost entirely disappeared for years 2–4 of the curriculum and the second national standardized exam.