We're enjoying your posts -- and we're learning a lot.  I hope that you all are learning from your patients, preceptors .. and your colleagues through this assigment, of course).

I posted a few times early in the rotation (1,2,3) and outlined for you how I think that this exercise should be undertaken.  I'll repeat myself a bit here .. as it seems that several of you need a reminder. (hint, hint).

This assignment is to DOCUMENT the learning that you are doing in your practices .. and to EDUCATE your colleagues.  Since you are all having different experiences and reading different atricles, this exercise should be a way for you to share important information with each other.

What's important information?  We're hoping that you learn the concept of POEMs.  Here's another good review.  This is old hat for you by now - right?

What's a POEM?

1. They address a question that we face in clinical practice. 
2. They measure outcomes that we and our patients care about: symptoms, morbidity, quality of life, and mortality.
3. They have the potential to change the way we practice
   

So the POEM part is relevant to how you select your article.  The next part that's important is how you present your work. 

Your readers would much rather see a link to the interesting article (or the abstract) instead of a reference.   References are so '90's ... c'mon folks, this is 2004 ... I'm even thinking that we should make links to the full text, pubmed or hubmed resource required, and full references forbidden.  Perhaps this would get the point across!

You needn't write a long essay -- nor do you need to format the entry so formally as most of you are doing.  Recall that I told you that the primary audience is the other students.  Do you really talk to each other this way?   I doubt it.  So lighten up.  This is supposed to be fun AND educational .. not so formal as many of you are writing.  I think you're making it a more difficult assignment than it needs to be!   

Oh, One more Thing.  If you are pasting the entry from MS-Word or another editor .. or from the Internet, please do a little select-all once you get the text here and change the font to Arial and xx-small.  It will make things much easier to read.