Faculty Bibliography

Physicians who are insufficiently prepared to make choices on antibiotic selection may use antibiotics inappropriately. We surveyed medical students' perceptions and attitudes about their training on antimicrobial use to identify gaps in medical education. Medical students at an urban medical school in the northeast were e-mailed a link to an online survey. The survey was online for 1 week, after which time the survey responses were downloaded and analyzed. Thirty percent of medical students responded to the survey (n = 304). The majority of third- and fourth-year medical students believe that antibiotics are overused in the hospital and in outpatient areas. Over three quarters of the students would like more education on antibiotic selection, and 83% wanted this education to be during the third year of medical school. The resources they used the most for antibiotic selection included other physicians and handheld programs such as Epocrates, but no clear resource emerged as the dominant preference. Medical students recognized the importance of judicious antibiotic use and would like greater instruction on how to choose antibiotics appropriately. Medical school curricula should be expanded in the third year of medical school to provide students with additional training timed with their clinical rotations.

Patients with essential tremor (ET) may develop Parkinson's disease (PD); however, few studies have examined the clinical features of this combination syndrome. Fifty-three patients with ET-PD were studied and compared to 53 PD and 150 ET patients. Although the latency from onset of ET to PD was brief (<5 years) in 38.5%, in a sizable proportion (30.8%), it was very long (>20 years). The gender distribution of ET-PD (67.9% male) was identical to that of PD (67.9% male), yet differed from that of ET (50.0% male) (P = 0.02). The initial cardinal sign of PD was rest tremor in 100% of patients. In ET-PD, the side of greatest initial ET severity usually matched that of greatest PD severity (P < 0.05). In ET-PD, male gender predominated and the sidedness of the ET and PD usually matched. The co-occurrence of the two diagnoses in the same patient may be mechanistically related.