Ten Things Medical Doctors Are Not Good At. The Next Generation IBT TOEFL.
Of course, I'm not referring to your doctor who, like Mary Poppins, is practically perfect in every way. But let's just say that the rest of us physicians have things we could do better...
1. Taking time to actually stop and get to know the patient.
I know one lady who says she has a better relationship with the checkout clerk at the grocery store than with her physician. It's true that doctors have a legitimate need to see a certain volume of patients in order to cover practice-expenses and still have money to take home. This translates into a limited amount of time per patient. However, some of the time-pressure doctors feel they are under is of their own making, and even the same amount of time might be better spent.
How is this any different from what a restaurant owner has to do? The restauranteur has to supervise employees, handle deliveries, and oversee the preparation and serving of food, yet still finds time somehow to chat with the customers.
2. Sticking to appointment schedules.
Yes, medicine is unpredictable and doctors must meet the medical needs of the patients in front of them before moving on to others. Patients understand this. But scheduling ten different patients for a 1:00 p.m. appointment is inexcusable.
3. Remembering what happened at the last visit, what test they asked for and why they asked for it.
Need I say more?
4. Dealing with more than one chief complaint per visit.
This is a variant of the time-pressure issue. With the allotted time being only just adequate to cover one problem, woe to the patient who has two or three. There is no easy solution apart from scheduling another visit to handle an additional problem. But if you're the patient, it's in your best interest to prioritize your problems and take control of the agenda. Get the most important issue out on the table first thing and before the doctor launches into an unrelated and time-consuming tangent.
5. Diagnosing conditions for which "objective" tests are not available.
Even modern medicine doesn't have good tests that show every condition as an abnormal blood-level or as a spot on a scan. But that doesn't mean that the untestable conditions don't exist or are somehow less credible. For example, there is no confirmatory medical test for migraine, but unless the 12% of the population experiencing this problem is lying, there are a lot of folks out there for whom the tests might be normal, but they aren't.
6. Staying interested in you when there are no more tests to order or procedures to do.
This is not a good time to drop the ball. Regardless of the outcome of a test or procedure, there is still some unmet need to be addressed.
7. Delivering on promises.
This one seems so needless. For example, why would a doctor promise that records and films will go to a specialist and then not follow through? Better not to make such promises in the first place.
8. Picking up a telephone to call another doctor.
I don't understand why this occurs, but physicians often seem incredibly reluctant to phone another doctor to sort out a question concerning their shared patient. Sometimes they order a nurse or clerk to do it instead, or leave the issue unresolved.
9. Respecting boundaries.
This bears explaining. Boundaries refer to the lines at which one person's rights and responsibilities end and another person's rights and responsibilities begin. Crossing a boundary without permission usually leads to grief and resentment. An example of one doctor not respecting a boundary with another doctor is when doctor #1 tells the patient to change the dose of a medicine prescribed by doctor #2. This leaves the patient caught in the middle.
10. Calling you back with results of procedures and tests.
Once patients have had, say, a scan, a colonoscopy or a blood-test, they start worrying about all the most dangerous things that might turn up. A simple phone call to the patient that nothing bad turned up on the tests and that the details can be discussed at the next visit--even if it comes from staff--prevents a lot of worry and sleeplessness.
There seems to be a recurring theme here. Perhaps I'm revealing my age when I say I am reminded of the chain-gang boss in Paul Newman's "Cool Hand Luke" movie who drawled, "What we have here is a failure to communicate!"
(C) 2005 by Gary Cordingley
Gary Cordingley, MD, PhD, is a clinical neurologist, teacher and researcher who works in Athens, Ohio. For more health-related articles see his website at: http://www.cordingleyneurology.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
A number of years ago Educational Testing Services (ETS), the people responsible for the TOEFL test, brought the test into the computer age by transitioning it from a paper-based test to a computer-based test. This allowed them to stop the practice of previewing
questions and answers while listening to material, and it allowed them to add some unique testing questions, such as matching up items and placing a sentence within a paragraph. It also allowed them to individualize the listening and grammar sections of the test by catering items to the ability of the student. A student's score was no longer dependent on the number of correct answer he or she gave but the degree of difficulty of questions he or she was able to answer correctly.
However, the computer-based TOEFL was an assembly of separate skills - reading, listening, grammar, and writing. In this format it was possible for students to learn tricks to increase their performance in each of these areas, a practice that did not reflect their true ability to handle the language. Students could demonstrate their reading skills separate from their listening skills and writing skills, but true language is seldom so fragmented. This weakness in the test was made worse by the absence of a speaking component. If a student wanted to demonstrate a competency in this skill, he or she had to take a separate speaking test such as the TSE, the Test of Spoken English, also produced by ETS. It became obvious that a change in the TOEFL was necessary to reflect the true nature of English to see whether a testtaker could handle the language in more true-to-life situations. Enter the Internet, the ultimate medium.
With the Next Generation iBT TOEFL, students go on-line and take the test directly from ETS at test centers throughout the world. There are roughly forty-five sessions a year, all on Fridays or Saturdays. Details can be found on the ETS web site at http://www.ets.org. The iBT, Internet-based
test, is an integration of all four language skills - reading, listening, speaking, and writing - in which grammar plays a more minor but still a necessary component. In other words, there is no longer a grammar section on the TOEFL, but grammar is taken into consideration in the evaluation of both the speaking and writing sections. Another change is in the scoring. Whereas the computer-based TOEFL was scored out of 300, the iBT is scored out of 120, 30 in each of the four skills. To succeed in this new format, students need to be good note takers as they will be required to read passages and then listen to lectures or long conversations in order to respond either orally or by writing to questions, usually about how the written material relates to the listening material. The language skills of gist, details, inferences, vocabulary, reference, and insertion are still tested along with the new skills of paraphrasing and determining overall organization and purpose. The addition of these new skills, along with the integration of the sections, makes the Next Generation iBT TOEFL a more valid evaluation of a student's real-life language skills and his or her ability to succeed in a real academic setting.
Since preparing for
the Next Generation iBT TOEFL is challenging, a student is well advised to take a class or join a study group to develop the necessary skills to pass. Also, it is essential that a student get a good preparation textbook, but there are only a few that have kept up with the changes in the test, such as Longman Preparation Course for the TOEFL Test , Next Generation iBT and Delta's Key to the Next Generation TOEFL Test. Many private and community colleges offer one- or two-term preparation courses, but there may be prerequisites a student must satisfy before being admitted to these classes. There is an alternative, however, for people who want to bypass prerequisites or are unable to invest three to six months preparation time. The TEST PREP Team offers a 45-hour intensive TOEFL Preparation Course over ten Saturdays. This course is available only in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, Canada. Information on this course, as well as a number of learning tools to help students prepare by themselves, is available at http://study4toefl.com, but hurry - the next class starts on October 8th.Ambien has been teaching ESL at the college level since 1989 and, as a TOEFL specialist, has been helping students get high TOEFL scores since 1997. He is friendly, personable, kind, patient, supportive and motivating. Ambien is certified as a specialist in the Next Generation iBT TOEFL.
Ambien Malecot, BA, MA
Instructor / Program Developer
TOEFL Course
#206 - 3280 West Broadway
Vancouver, British Columbia
V6K 2H4 CANADA
Telephone: 604-738-0077
Fax: 604-739-3777
E-mail: info@study4toefl.com
Web Address: http://www.study4toefl.com
When one teaches, two learn - Robert Half
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
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