Contraband Hospital, Freedmen’s Hospital, and Alexander Augusta

The tens of thousands of enslaved Blacks liberated by union forces during the American Civil War were considered seized property and thus were referred to as contraband. As wartime refugees they sought protection in federal military installations, popularly known as contraband camps, located throughout the occupied South. One of the largest was Camp Baker in the rural northwestern sector of Washington, DC, where about 40,000 persons were sheltered. To provide basic medical care, the military outfitted, in 1863, an infirmary called the Contraband Hospital, later renamed Freedmen’s Hospital. From its founding in 1867 the medical department of Howard University was attached to Freemen’s Hospital, which in 1975 was renamed the Howard University Hospital, the two institutions establishing a long partnership of medical education and hospital care that continues to the present day.

A Comprehensive Review of the Therapeutic Value of Urine-Derived Stem Cells

Stem cells possess regenerative powers and multidirectional differentiation potential and play an important role in disease treatment and basic medical research. Urine-derived stem cells (USCs) represent a newly discovered type of stem cell with biological characteristics similar to those of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs), including their doubling time and immunophenotype. USCs are noninvasive and can be readily obtained from voided urine and steadily cultured. Based on advances in this field, USCs and their secretions have increasingly emerged as ideal sources. USCs may play regulatory roles in the cellular immune system, oxidative stress, revascularization, apoptosis and autophagy. This review summarizes the applications of USCs in tissue regeneration and various disease treatments. Furthermore, by analysing their limitations, we anticipate the development of more feasible therapeutic strategies to promote USC-based individualized treatment.

Evaluation Scale of Clinicians’ Views and Expectations About Academics and Academic Productivity Process, Validity and Reliability Study

Basic medical education, clinical education and academician processes are closely related concepts. Long-term professional practice can disrupt the harmony between these dynamic processes. In this study, it was aimed to evaluate the answers given by clinicians who try to balance the triangle of basic and clinical medical education, patient relations and academic life to questions about their academic processes. The questionnaire, consisting of nineteen closed-ended questions, was answered by clinicians who are experts in their fields, academics and non-academicians, the data obtained were scaled, analyzed and evaluated, and the results were interpreted.

KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDE TOWARDS GERIATRIC HEALTH AND THE ASSOCIATED FACTORS AMONG MEDICAL STUDENTS OF INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY MALAYSIA

Comprehensive care towards geriatric health can be sustained by having good knowledge and attitude among the providers. Hence, this research aims to measure the knowledge and attitude of the final year medical students towards geriatric health and determine the associated factors. A cross-sectional study was conducted among the students using structured questionnaires of Geriatric-Attitude-Scale and Palmore-Facts-on-Aging-Quiz was used. Data was analysed using Mann Whitney U test, Chi square test and Spearman correlation coefficient analysis for the association between the score and studied variables. Median score of students’ knowledges is at 14.00 (IQR 13.00) and mean score for attitude is 48.52 (+5.53) respectively. Place of residence (P= 0.01) and presence of grandparents (P= 0.04) were the significant factors that affected knowledge of students towards geriatrics while number of siblings (P= 0.05) influenced attitudes of students towards geriatrics. Improvement of current geriatric curriculum should be done with more refined implementation of gerontology course in the basic medical learning.

Bioinformatics Storing Databases

An exceptional branch of data that requires huge databases has been shown lately from genome sequencing projects which is a field that employs computational approaches to answer biological questions. With this huge sequence of information that is available for researchers, bioinformatics plays a big role in studying basic medical-biological problems. The challenge that faces bioinformatical scientists is to help in discovering genes and designing molecular models, site-directed mutagenesis, and other experiments that reveal the unknown relationships concerning the structure and function of genes and proteins. This become a big challenge especially with the huge amount of data that is generated using the human genome and other systematic sequencing efforts up till now. Bioinformatics solves biological problems depending on available data. It is concerned with creating databases and predicting the outcome of lab experiments.

Reflection - an effective strategy for outcome-based learning in basic medical sciences

Objective: To determine the role of guided reflection for improved learning outcomes in students of basic dental sciences. Method: The quasi-experimental comparative educational study was conducted at the Islamic International Dental College, Islamabad, Pakistan, from May to September 2019, and comprised second-year undergraduate students in the Basic Medical Sciences curriculum for Microbiology. The subjects were arbitrarily divided into Group-1, which was exposed to guided reflection, and Group-2, which was not asked to reflect on the lectures. Post-intervention, a test of 30 multiple choice questions on the selected topics was conducted to compare the level of learning between the groups. After three weeks, the same activity was repeated with the same groups, but with different topics of lectures. Data was analysed using SPSS 21. Results: Of the total 75 students, there were 28 female and 9 male students in Group-1 (Reflectors), 29 female and 9 male students in Group-2 (Non-Reflectors). Overall, there were 18 male and 57 female students. The overall mean age was 20 years The difference between the groups after the first session was not significant (p>0.05). After session 2, Group-1 score was significantly better than that of Group-2 (p<0.05). Conclusion: Reflective practices on teaching sessions at the end of lectures proved to be an effective strategy to achieve outcome-based learning.