OK, I've read some of your posts and feel that none of you really have gone through PBL to really formulate an opinion. One of my patient's grandson goes to JABSOM and it's PBL there. According to him, PBL is a huge time killer in that many times you are looking for information rather than going to where information is (ie textbook). Some of you may argue and say that you'll have to look for information later as a physician so why not start now....the thing is you are already a physician. As a student with limited time to study, looking for information is not so ideal.
Not trying to beat a dead horse, but you can't really say that none of us has the experience to even form an opinion, when there are a few of us here who are currently IN a PBL program or have gone through one at some level. Especially when your only experience is what you've heard through a "friend of a friend". And again, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I totally respect those who have seen it or researched it enough and decided that it isn't the correct learning method for them, that's fine. But in a lot of cases, I feel, people are being exposed to PBL by hearing negative comments from people who were exposed to PBL that possibly wasn't done "correctly".
Even in your example there, during the actual small group is NOT where you're going to be learning the basic sciences, but that's done on your own, with the actual textbooks. In the session you identify which basic sciences are important to that case, and what parts of those sciences you don't know, using the textbooks. We also look up terms or tests we don't know, again with the texts. We do use the internet if needed, but mainly to look up something that's more clinical that won't be in a book.....Ex: I like using Uptodate for some of that stuff, for treatment guidelines, etc....
I don't know how their program is setup, but if he's sitting in a PBL session trying to learn the basic sciences by looking stuff up on the internet, then that's not going to get him very far. I mean, all we have here are our textbooks, most of which we will have read cover to cover by the end of the 2 years. I've got friends at traditional lecture based programs who only rely on lectures/outlines from the professors and barely used their books.
The second point (again unlike many of you who has never gone through PBL) he made was that during the first year, you don't know anything. You have no basic ideas on anatomy, physiology or histology to be talking about patient cases. He felt that perhaps PBL may be beneficial starting the second year when you actually know the normal physiology.
In our PBL program, and I'm sure others, we initially had a gross anatomy/histology course that was traditional lecture based w/ lab. It's basically an intense 10-week course, but still considered a "survey" course, since we'll still be learning and picking anatomy topics throughout PBL.
Anyway, it's kind of a philosophical argument here since you're never going to know everything and you have to start somewhere. And back to the point of PBL, the point is NOT to simply solve the case....so it really doesn't matter if what we know coming into a case. The point is to work through it and learn about the basic sciences that cause those symptoms. So right now we have a 14-hr infant with ambiguous genitalia..... at this point we know very little about what it could be. But we able to come up w/ a decent diff. dx list between each of us and using the books. And quickly got to the point where we couldn't go further without doing some reading, so now we reading about development of UG system, and doing some side reading on anemias and androgen hormones so that when we got the blood work back next session we know the results mean and what to rule in/out.
To beat a dead horse....the point of PBL is not to simply discuss a case with knowledge we have.....but to let the case guide us through learning the basic science processes as they come up.
His third point was that your clinicals ARE PBLs. Do you really need to start this during the first year of school when absorbing material in a more time efficient manner is paramount?
Again, these opinions came from an actual med student here at JABSOM (University of Hawaii med school).
I'd argue that doing this stuff your 1st two years allows for a smoother transition into your clinical years since you've already been use to the process of being presented a clinical problem ---> then know how to think through which basic sciences are involved --> how to develop a diff. dx list --> which tests you could to do rule in/out things on your list --> etc.... And you would have already read through most of your standard textbooks so you'd know right where to go to find that..... ex: you may find stuff about anemia in multiple textbooks, but from your reading you may know that your physio book puts a slightly different slant on it that's usefully for the case you're working on.
And again, I don't how one can absorb material more efficiently. If he's only learning (or trying to learn) the basic concepts in a PBL session then that's just not a good way to do. Pretty much my week is strictly me reading my textbooks and learning the concepts, and then for 6 hours total a week (a drop in the bucket) I get to apply those concepts in a clinical setting. I really don't see how you can learn more efficiently......UNLESS you don't read the textbook at all and only study condensed powerpoint slides or outlines.
I'm definitely not knocking that as many people do that during med school and are totally fine. I just know that, for me personally, I need to see the "big picture" and just can't read bullet points and understand a concept. I need to put it into a larger context by reading the textbook's detailed explanation and see how it relates clinically.
