The overall goal of this project is to design, implement, evaluate and disseminate a medical school curriculum focusing on communication skills key to effective cancer prevention and early detection of prostate, testicular and colorectal cancer among male patients. This curriculum will include comprehensive teaching on state-of-the art cancer prevention and early detection counseling and screening techniques critical to the education of medical students. Teaching of related physical exam procedures will be accomplished by identifying and recommending existing resources (e.g., the Barbara Bates Male Genital Exam instructional video with appropriate anatomical models and recommended clinical observation and practice exercises). This curriculum will be implemented and integrated into both the Brown Medical School and Dartmouth Medical School teaching programs and maintained into the future. Eight additional medical schools will be recruited for full implementation of the curriculum program. Faculty development workshops accompanied by curriculum materials and resources will be offered at participating schools. Further dissemination of materials will be supported by presentations and faculty development workshops at national conferences and publication of related manuscripts in peer reviewed journals. Educational materials developed will be made available to medical school faculty in print and video format. Wider dissemination will be accomplished in a more generic version for a larger audience of health professionals training (e.g. physician's assistants, nurse practitioners, etc.) via the world wide web. Short-Term Objective: To develop through scholarly efforts new educational materials and approaches which will be standardized through a structured instructional design process, and fully implement this curriculum at the two pilot sites where it will be maintained into the future. Additional implementation will be accomplished at 8 additional medical schools in years 4 and 5 of the project. Long-Term Objective: To improve medical and other health professional education nationally by dissemination of a new educational curriculum designed to be replicated in a variety of medical school and other health professional training settings. This curriculum will focus on communication skills important to male cancer screening and related content areas (with ancillary training using other resources for teaching physical exam skills), providing tools and methods for medical educators to improve teaching around this topic in health professional schools nationwide.
| Dube, Catherine E; Fuller, Barbara K; Rosen, Rochelle K et al. (2005) Men's experiences of physical exams and cancer screening tests: a qualitative study. Prev Med 40:628-35 |
| Dube, Catherine E; Fuller, Barbara K (2003) A qualitative study of communication skills for male cancer screening discussions. J Cancer Educ 18:182-7 |
