Only 21 percent of surveyed medical students could identify five true and two false indications of when and when not to wash their hands in the clinical setting, according to a study published in the December issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of APIC the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.

Residents who attend conferences that focus on missed or misinterpreted cases are 67% less likely to miss important findings when reading on-call musculoskeletal x-ray images, a new study shows.

"Residents had 55 major discrepancies out of 5,326 x-ray studies of the shoulder, elbow, hand, wrist, ankle, foot, pelvis and knee before we began holding regular focused missed case conferences," said Dr. Jason Itri, of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and one of the authors of the study. That number dropped to 18 major discrepancies out of 5,272 x-rays studies after the focus missed-case conferences became part of the resident education program, he said.