Everybody is familiar with the stereotypes of medical education from the student perspective: grueling hours, little recognition, and even less glory.

The good news — you've been offered the perfect job. The not-so-good news — it's contingent on a medical exam.

As medicine undergoes rapid transformation, North American leaders in continuing medical education (CME) have joined together to transform CME itself. Their goal is to see that physicians have the best professional development resources available throughout their careers to translate new research into better patient care.

New research published in the June issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons shows that improving the university recruitment strategy and process could raise the number of women faculty in medicine. The study also suggests that specific procedural steps could assist in identifying and actively recruiting qualified women for faculty positions in surgery departments.

A minority of U.S. medical schools surveyed have adopted policies on conflicts of interest regarding financial interests held by the institutions, while at least two-thirds have policies applying to financial interests of institutional officials, according to a study in the February 13 issue of JAMA.

Internal medicine residents had low scores in a test of biostatistics knowledge, and about three-fourths of the residents surveyed indicated they have low confidence in understanding the statistics they encounter in medical literature, according to an article in the September 5 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on medical education.

Canadian physicians who score poorly on the patient-physician communication portion of the national licensing examination receive more complaints to regulatory authorities on issues such as communication or quality-of-care problems, according to an article in the September 5 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on medical education.

Despite the potential for conflict of interest, virtually all practicing physicians in the U.S. have some form of relationship with pharmaceutical manufacturers but the nature and extent of those relationships vary, depending on the kind of practice, medical specialty, patient mix, and professional activities, reports a study in the April 26 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.