Browsing by Author "Burch, Vanessa C"

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    Open Access
    A comparison of physician emigration from Africa to the United States of America between 2005 and 2015
    (2017) Duvivier, Robbert J; Burch, Vanessa C; Boulet, John R
    BACKGROUND: Migration of health professionals has been a cause for global concern, in particular migration from African countries with a high disease burden and already fragile health systems. An estimated one fifth of African-born physicians are working in high-income countries. Lack of good data makes it difficult to determine what constitutes "African" physicians, as most studies do not distinguish between their country of citizenship and country of training. Thus, the real extent of migration from African countries to the United States (US) remains unclear. This paper quantifies where African migrant physicians come from, where they were educated, and how these trends have changed over time. METHODS: We combined data from the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates with the 2005 and 2015 American Medical Association Physician Masterfiles. Using a repeated cross-sectional study design, we reviewed the available data, including medical school attended, country of medical school, and citizenship when entering medical school. RESULTS: The outflow of African-educated physicians to the US has increased over the past 10 years, from 10 684 in 2005 to 13 584 in 2015 (27.1% increase). This represents 5.9% of all international medical graduates in the US workforce in 2015. The number of African-educated physicians who graduated from medical schools in sub-Saharan countries was 2014 in 2005 and 8150 in 2015 (304.6% increase). We found four distinct categorizations of African-trained physicians migrating to the US: (1) citizens from an African country who attended medical school in their own country (86.2%, n = 11,697); (2) citizens from an African country who attended medical school in another African country (2.3%, n = 317); (3) US citizens who attended medical school in an African country (4.0%, n = 537); (4) citizens from a country outside Africa, and other than the United States, who attended medical school in an African country (7.5%, n = 1013). Overall, six schools in Africa provided half of all African-educated physicians. CONCLUSIONS: The number of African-educated physicians in the US has increased over the past 10 years. We have distinguished four migration patterns, based on citizenship and country of medical school. The majority of African graduates come to the US from relatively few countries, and from a limited number of medical schools. A proportion are not citizens of the country where they attended medical school, highlighting the internationalization of medical education.
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    Open Access
    Checklist of cognitive contributions to diagnostic errors: a tool for clinician-educators
    (2018) Naude, Jonathan Michael; Burch, Vanessa C
    Background: Experienced clinician educators readily identify trainees with diagnostic reasoning difficulties but often lack training to diagnose and remediate errors. Taxonomies of cognitive causes of diagnostic errors can inform remediation, but clinician educators need simple tools to identify, record, report and provide feedback on these errors. A checklist may help achieve these goals. Objectives: To characterise the cognitive contributions to diagnostic errors (CCDEs), trainees make in patient encounters, with the view to develop training and remediation programmes for medical residents preparing for specialist examinations. Secondly, to determine examiners’ perceptions of a checklist in order to document and provide feedback on CCDEs to unsuccessful candidates and trainees making diagnostic errors in examinations, on ward rounds and during bedside teaching activities. Methods: Thirty examiners used a 17-item checklist to identify and record CCDEs made by medical residents failing patient encounters in a national specialist examination. A survey was used to explore examiners perceptions of the checklist to document and provide feedback on these errors. Results: Ninety-eight of 264 patient encounters were failed (37%). Ninety-four completed checklists documented 691 CCDEs (median of 7 per encounter). Cardiac (28.7%) and neurology patients (18.1%) constituted approximately half of the failed encounters. By category: data synthesis was more problematic than data gathering, faulty knowledge or data interpretation (35.2% vs. 25.8% vs. 21.9% vs. 17.1%); χ2=48.2, (p<0.0001 for all comparisons). The 'top five’ individual CCDEs were failure to elicit history and/or examination findings; poor knowledge of clinical features (illness scripts); case synthesis (putting the case together) and misinterpretation of clinical findings. History and physical examination-related errors accounted for 60% of the 'top 5’ CCDEs, Examination-related errors were more common than history-related errors (p<0.0001). The survey of the checklist was completed by all (30) examiners. Seventy-three percent finished the checklist in less than five minutes, describing it as comprehensive and easy to use. The majority (96.7%) thought the checklist could be a better way of providing structured feedback to unsuccessful candidates. Most examiners (93.3%) considered it a useful way of guiding bedside teaching for residents preparing for specialist examinations, and 76.7% thought it could improve feedback on CCDEs to unsuccessful candidates and guide remediation and training. Conclusion: A 17-item checklist identified three priority CCDEs which require focussed remediation and training in South African medical residency programmes: improving clinical skills, developing adequate illness scripts and 'putting a case together’. This does not require extensive pedagogic expertise but rather use of a simple tool to provide customised feedback, remediation and faculty support. We showed that the simple checklist used in this study helped clinician-educators/examiners without pedagogic expertise to diagnose and record CCDEs contributing to poor performance in high stakes examinations. Examiners endorsed the use of the checklist and its potential to improve feedback and training addressing CCDEs made by trainees at the bedside.
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    Open Access
    Mortality in patients treated for tuberculous pericarditis in sub-Saharan Africa.
    (Health & Medical Publishing Group, 2008) Mayosi, Bongani M; Wiysonge, Charles Shey; Ntsekhe, Mpiko; Gumedze, Freedom; Volmink Jimmy A; Maartens, Gary; Aje, Akinyemi; Thomas, Baby M; Thomas, Kandathil M; Awotedu, Abolade A; Bongani, Thembela; Mntla, Phindile; Maritz, Frans; Blackett, Kathleen Ngu; Nkouonlack, Duquesne C; Burch, Vanessa C; Rebe, Kevin; Parrish, Andy; Sliwa, Karen; Vezi, Brian Z; Alam, Nowshad; Brown, Basil G; Gould, Trevor; Visser, Tim; Magula, Nombulelo P; Commerford, Patrick J
    Tuberculous pericarditis is one of the most severe forms of extrapulmonary tuberculosis, causing death or disability in a substantial proportion of affected people.1,2 In Africa, the incidence of tuberculous pericarditis is rising as a result of the HIV epidemic.3 The effect of HIV infection on survival in patients with tuberculous pericarditis is unknown.2,4 Whereas some investigators have suggested that HIV-infected patients with tuberculous pericarditis have a similar outcome to non-infected cases,5 others have shown that there may be an increase in mortality in HIV associated with tuberculous pericarditis.2,6,7 We established a prospective observational study, the Investigation of the Management of Pericarditis in Africa (IMPI Africa) registry, to obtain current information on the diagnosis, management and outcome of patients with presumed tuberculous pericarditis living in sub-Saharan Africa, where the burden of HIV infection is the greatest in the world.4,8-10 In this paper, we report the mortality rate and its predictors during the 6 months of antituberculosis treatment among patients enrolled in the regist