Practice Management Skills Research Articles

Diabetes education: Ideas into action

AbstractPatient education has always been considered an essential part of the management of diabetes mellitus. A variety of educational methods, of varying levels of complexity and sophistication, exist. In the pursuit of efficient methods of education it is often overlooked that the relationship between education and glycaemic control, or education and the patients' subsequent behaviour, is not at all clear‐cut. Participation in an educational programme does not necessarily result in any long‐term change in control or behaviour. This essay examines the role played by education, and places it in the context of other variables which are known to affect outcome. It is suggested that the importance of education lies, not simply in the transmission of information, but in a number of other functions including an increase in self‐confidence and the ability to cope. It is further suggested that an educational programme should concentrate on teaching practical management skills. Although preferred by some patients, conventional teaching methods are less valuable than active experiential ones.

Textbook of Family Practice.

A practical resource which provides all the information needed for optimal patient care in family practice. Organized by presenting symptoms, this edition adopts a humanistic and problem-oriented approach to primary care. Packed with practical management skills, technological advances in office management and information on maintaining problem-oriented medical records that can increase office efficiency, it also covers family structure, impact of illness on the family, impact of divorce, elder and spouse abuse, genetic problems economics of family practice and more.

Professional Satisfaction in Dentistry

The profile of the most satisfied dentist seems to be one of a contented, nonthreatened, positive person, who is active in the profession and community, has confidence in his management skills, and is positive about the direction of dentistry. He knows what he wants and has values that are likely to help him attain his goals. Certainly, many of the behaviors shown by highly satisfied dentists read like a prescription for avoiding professional burnout. By counseling the dissatisfied dentist to become more active professionally, to improve his or her practice management skills, to develop a positive attitude toward change in the dental profession, it should be possible to help these dentists gain more positive feelings about themselves and their profession. Although it is not certain that any change can be effected in the value structure of a currently dissatisfied dentist, it is possible to encourage the benevolent leader type to enter the profession whenever he or she can be identified.

Stress management training in medical school.

It has been widely noted that medical school can be stressful experience for many students and that on completion of their medical education students will enter a profession high in potential stressors. However, very few systematic efforts to teach medical students practical stress management skills have been undertaken. In the study reported here, a group of students volunteered to participate in a six-session program that taught them personal stress management techniques, including self-relaxation training, schedule-planning, priority-setting, leisure time-planning, and cognitive modification techniques. From pretraining to posttraining, the students showed improvement on a variety of measures that included knowledge about stress, self-report inventory scores assessing stress symptoms and life-style, personal ratings of stressful situations, and their daily activity schedules. A control group largely failed to show improvement relative to the stress management training group largely failed to show improvement relative to the stress management training group subjects. The importance of making available to students such specific, behavioral and preventive stress management training is discussed.

ACTIVITIES OF MIDDLE MANAGERS ? A TRAINING GUIDE

Abstract This article argues that the teaching of practical management skills could, with advantage, be given more prominence in post-graduate and post-experience courses. If transference of learning is to take place, then the context in which the skills are practised on the job has to be discovered. Six items, selected from a previous research study of what managers do, were given to students enrolled for management courses. The results suggest that trouble shooting, forward planning, and briefing subordinates are important aspects of many managers'jobs. Teachers could ask their own students these questions, (or others of a similar nature) and formulate their practical skills objectives in response to the answers received. Suggestions on how this might be done are provided. If followed, the customer appeal of courses would be considerably enhanced.

Software Engineering: From Theory ToPractice

One of the topics missing from many of today's Computer Science/Software Engineering courses is a course where the students would get three types of input: (1) a substantial project before the final year (usually only small revision questions or exercises are offered); (2) a programme of study that binds all learning objectives within a particular level and (3) a preparation for eventual employment by for example working in teams for problem solving, organisational, and practical management skills. In this paper we will describe our experience in running one such course entitled: An Applications Workshop Programme. We shall detail the philosophy behind the design, the organisation of the programme, the applications to be undertaken by the students, the organisation of the work between the students, and the lessons learned from running this series of workshops over all levels, but in particular the second year.