We participated in the “Advanced Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) Osaka Trial, ” which was part of the 10th Medical Education Seminar and Workshop in Osaka. OSCEs have been used to assess students' clinical ability before the clinical clerkship program, where the medical interview and the medical examination are introduced as basic clinical skills. The Advanced OSCE is used to assess students' clinical ability after they have done clinical clerkships; it will soon be a part of the national board examination. In the present trial, the students and residents took the Advanced OSCE with 6 themes: pharyngeal pain, palpitations, dyspnea, abdominal pain, hypertension, and cardiac arrest. We examined questionnaires completed by students and residents just after they had taken the Advanced OSCE. We believe that the use of simulators is important for medical students and residents to improve their clinical skills and that appropriate feedback is also extremely important.

Objective: The prevalence of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in patients with various urologic disorders is unknown. We conducted the survey to determine the prevalence of CAM use in ambulatory patients.
Methods: We distributed questionnaires to 331 ambulatory patients with various urologic disorders in our department from March 10 to 31, 2004.
Results: One in third (30.5%) patients reported the use of at least one CAM. Patient age and gender were not associated with the frequency of the use of CAM. Although not statistically significant, patients with malignant disease showed a higher frequency of CAM use compared with patients with benign disease; 36.2% vs 27.0%, P=0.08. Among the CAM users, only 16 patients (15.8%) informed health care staff of their CAM use.
Conclusion: This result shows the current situation of CAM use in patients with urologic disorders. Because of the high prevalence, health care professionals should ask about patients' use of CAM.