In this thread we talk about how crappy PBL is

[notbobtrustme]

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Instead of studying productively for the next test, we had to do a PBL case. So I had to sit for 3 hours listening to this idiot ******* talk about muscle weakness. Bear in mind, I already found the diagnosis and treatment for the case by spending about 40 minutes on Google. When I pointed this out to the group, the same idiot ******* said "DOCTORS CANT USE GOOGLE ON ROUNDS" and proceeded to waste the rest of the group's time.

what a fricking waste of time.

 

[FSU2013]

<nod in agreement>

 

[urbanclassic]

Sometimes it's a waste, but sometimes I think it's helpful. It's a lot more helpful when you know the material, rather than just guessing random things it could be.

 

[D elegans]

I like PBL

 

[NickNaylor]

Instead of studying productively for the next test, we had to do a PBL case. So I had to sit for 3 hours listening to this idiot ******* talk about muscle weakness. Bear in mind, I already found the diagnosis and treatment for the case by spending about 40 minutes on Google. When I pointed this out to the group, the same idiot ******* said "DOCTORS CANT USE GOOGLE ON ROUNDS" and proceeded to waste the rest of the group's time.

what a fricking waste of time.

But everyone loves PBL because it makes you a better doctor because it's useful to work together to solve a problem amirite?

(sent from my phone)

 

[VisionaryTics]

But everyone loves PBL because it makes you a better doctor because it's useful to work together to solve a problem amirite?

(sent from my phone)

PBL: The Blind Leading the Blind.

Peer teaching sessions as a third-year are still brutal. Now it's people repeating stuff they copied from UpToDate instead of Google.

-edit- Like below, glad that PBL was only a small portion of my curriculum. I have no idea why the LCME is force-feeding it down everyone's throats. Are there any studies showing superiority of PBL curricula in MEDICAL education? Actual PBL for learning the pre-clinical corpus of medical knowledge, not just a single topic with pre-test/post-test metrics like I always see.

 

[KinasePro]

Best decision of my life was to avoid PBL-heavy curricula like the plague. The little bit of PBL that we have at our school has been the most obnoxious component of my entire educational career thus far.

 

[FIREitUP]

PBL fosters team work and critical thinking skills with the added benefit of teaching you the most effective way of banging your head against the wall.

 

[neusu]

PBL was horrible. Somehow the dumbest kid in the class always had the most to say and held everything up because of absolute ineptitude. Most of the cases were outside the scope of the physician tasked to run the session and the format was horrible.

PBL should be redesigned as a game, everyone is assigned a role be it primary team, consulting service, consulting surgery team, radiology, anesthesia, pathology, etc.. The goal will be to sign off as fast as possible, deflect getting the patient turfed to your service, or request extra unnecessary studies because you're unwilling to make a call.

 

[Michael Corleon]

Its bad. If its about team work then don't assign outside tasks. Honestly the entire medical curriculum seems pretty average. educators by nature aren't about efficiency and being useful. Just think about all the dumb hoops we have to jump through in this game.

If it were about productivity then see could measure progress. But I think we all agree that PBL has about a 10% ROI. There are better ways to learn to work with a team.

Also, this reminds me of a company that was known for having great friendly employees. They were asked how they trained their employees to be like this. They said, we don't train them, we just here nice people.

The abrasive a*holes aren't going to change because of a PBL group. And the competent aren't improving.

 

[NickNaylor]

PBL: The Blind Leading the Blind.

Peer teaching sessions as a third-year are still brutal. Now it's people repeating stuff they copied from UpToDate instead of Google.

-edit- Like below, glad that PBL was only a small portion of my curriculum. I have no idea why the LCME is force-feeding it down everyone's throats. Are there any studies showing superiority of PBL curricula in MEDICAL education? Actual PBL for learning the pre-clinical corpus of medical knowledge, not just a single topic with pre-test/post-test metrics like I always see.

I saw a study that showed that students in PBL curriculums reported being better able to interact with patients and had better interpersonal skills. I don't remember how those things were measured. Importantly though they didn't report any academic advantages compared to traditional curriculums.

(sent from my phone)

 

[notbobtrustme]

Best decision of my life was to avoid PBL-heavy curricula like the plague. The little bit of PBL that we have at our school has been the most obnoxious component of my entire educational career thus far.

yep, our school is 95% didactic, but these small bits of PBL are going to give me a stroke.

 

[Wordead]

PBL teaches you whos a ***** in your class and who might not be

 

[Cinclus]

I still have to finish my presentation for PBL tomorrow, so I kinda dislike it at the moment. We only have it for about 2 hours each week though, so it's not bad. It's actually sometimes quite interesting, as we have a really good facilitator.

 

[FSU2013]

PBL teaches you whos a ***** in your class and who might not be

And if you can't find the *****, it's probably you, lol.

 

[madchemist89]

Our PBLs have been hit or miss so far. It really seems to depend on the professor's teaching experience and effort. Our PBL sessions are highly structured and competition between teams is encouraged, so it can be pretty fun some times. However, when things don't go well, it can be pretty bad, but our faculty has been very responsive to student feedback.

 

[cbrons]

PBL/TBL is garbage

 

[theseeker4]

Best decision of my life was to avoid PBL-heavy curricula like the plague. The little bit of PBL that we have at our school has been the most obnoxious component of my entire educational career thus far.

+1. The fact that Wayne has no PBL (other than a voluntary student group) is one of its biggest pluses to me👍

 

[achamess]

My school has drunk the TBL kool-aid, and they're foisting it on the poor underclassmen. My year got a pass, but now they're going full force. Where is the evidence that TBL/PBL is any better? What are the goals? Do they think that students will retain better? If so, there are much better methods for that (spaced repetition). Do they think we'll work better together? That's questionable. I think it actually creates more tension than it relieves. Do school just want to try to distinguish themselves and justify their existence (and 50K pricetag) in the age of low cost online education (e.g. pathoma, gunnertraining, etc.)? I think so. That's ultimately what they're trying to do. They need to have a reason to justify charging so much money, and dragging students through hours of "teaching" is how they do it. I know that's really cynical, but seeing what I've seen here at my school, I realize how relentless these admins and instructors are to push throw their system. It's ideological.

 

[Doctor D]

PBL can be the best or worst learning experience. Just depends on the group and facilitator.

 

[QQm]

PBL can be the best or worst learning experience. Just depends on the group and facilitator.

This statement seems to be imply there's a 50% chance of each outcome, and from personal experience it really isn't. And it seems that way in the personal experiences of most people in this thread.

Likewise I could say lecturers can be brilliant or crappy depending on the lecturer, but in medical school I've had maybe 2-3 great lecturers (my criteria for great being my willingness to attend a non-mandatory lecture), but I think I'd have a meltdown if we were to have a mandatory lecture policy.

So I think the best solution would be to make PBL/TBL voluntary; that way only the people who get anything from them will attend, and it will likely boost participation rate and enthusiasm for the activity. Of course that probably makes too much sense.

 

[cbrons]

Do school just want to try to distinguish themselves and justify their existence (and 50K pricetag) in the age of low cost online education (e.g. pathoma, gunnertraining, etc.)?

In part, yes.

 

[FIREitUP]

This statement seems to be imply there's a 50% chance of each outcome, and from personal experience it really isn't. And it seems that way in the personal experiences of most people in this thread.

Likewise I could say lecturers can be brilliant or crappy depending on the lecturer, but in medical school I've had maybe 2-3 great lecturers (my criteria for great being my willingness to attend a non-mandatory lecture), but I think I'd have a meltdown if we were to have a mandatory lecture policy.

So I think the best solution would be to make PBL/TBL voluntary; that way only the people who get anything from them will attend, and it will likely boost participation rate and enthusiasm for the activity. Of course that probably makes too much sense.

no one would go because no one gets anything from them. that's precisely why it's mandatory.

 

[Siggy]

Also, this reminds me of a company that was known for having great friendly employees. They were asked how they trained their employees to be like this. They said, we don't train them, we just here nice people.

...and this is precisely the issue with the PBL/interprofessionalism projects that are supposed to support "teamwork." The nice people don't need help and the a-holes are still going to be a-holes. If anything, it says a lot about the people who run medical schools. It's like all of them standing up and admitting that they're a bunch of passive aggressive a-holes and that we, somehow, have to be taught to not be like them. Furthermore, it fails to take into account that the buck has to stop someplace, and in medicine that place is the physician. You can bet your ___ that the floor nurses are documenting as much as they can to make any adverse incident the physician's fault ("He didn't come when we paged him because his postictial patient is still altered." No ___. The patient is postictial, but maintaining his airway and has stable vital signs.), but we're just supposed to take it because "interprofessionalism."

 

[MedicalBeast]

Ms2 here. at my school we have pbl 3 times a week for 3 hrs each session. thats 9 hours + normally have to spend 1-2 hrs after each session preparing to discuss the questions. what a waste of time. i wish i went to a school that had less or no pbl at all.

its not about learning teamwork/groupwork, we are all adults and if you haven't figured out how to work with others by now, perhaps you should go back to elementary school. pbl is just a way for them to not have to teach and make us do all the work ourselves.

 

[Nuel]

I enjoy some of the PBLs/TBLs/SGLs, etc--the ones that present a case and make you think using the basic science. Again this will depend on the facilitator. I would say 75% of PBLs have been a waste of time. But isn't PBL an LCME-requirement for curricula?

 

[Kevin Baker]

So I think the best solution would be to make PBL/TBL voluntary; that way only the people who get anything from them will attend, and it will likely boost participation rate and enthusiasm for the activity. Of course that probably makes too much sense.

We have had this for two classes and people just don't go. Our group of 8 gets down to 2 or 3 and without the group dynamic it makes more sense just to read out of a book. I enjoy the PBL as our cases are semi structured and my group tends to do the work the night before so each session is just a quick review or an actual learning session debating why the working dx is A and not B, and teaching each other little things or mnemonics we all picked up through the different sources we all use. When there are only a few people present, PBL loses it's luster.

 

[479260]

I had my first PBL session two days ago. I liked it. Really cool stuff.

 

[ArcGurren]

Jesus christ I had a good PBL experience. I hated lectures and either prefer reading on my own or interacting in groups. Third year esp I learned well in case-based discussions and most people I've talked to enjoyed PBL. This just might be the effect of SDN self-selecting borderline sociopathy though.

 

[Bojack Horseman]

PBL can be good or bad depending on your group, facilitator, length, frequency, and case. I had an awesome PBL facilitator who would intermittently teach us important/relevant clinical stuff. It made PBL interesting.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN Mobile app

 

[Michael Corleon]

Jesus christ I had a good PBL experience. I hated lectures and either prefer reading on my own or interacting in groups. Third year esp I learned well in case-based discussions and most people I've talked to enjoyed PBL. This just might be the effect of SDN self-selecting borderline sociopathy though.

Nope. Like above said, depends on group, facilitator and expectations.

 

[ArcGurren]

Nope. Like above said, depends on group, facilitator and expectations.

Yeah true, but I also think there's a personality type which selects for SDN posters. I like group interaction and discussing stuff, some people hate it and would rather stay in their rooms and memorize all day erryday

 

[FIREitUP]

Yeah true, but I also think there's a personality type which selects for SDN posters. I like group interaction and discussing stuff, some people hate it and would rather stay in their rooms and memorize all day erryday

I enjoy the group interaction, but my school is so lazy and their CBL is done so half assed that it undoubtedly ends in 2 hours of frustration. I think it can be implemented in an effective way, but only as an adjunct to self learning and should be like ~2 hours a week, not more.

 

[KinasePro]

Yeah true, but I also think there's a personality type which selects for SDN posters. I like group interaction and discussing stuff, some people hate it and would rather stay in their rooms and memorize all day erryday

Interaction is all well and good, but putting 10 MS1's in a room and asking them to learn the intricacies of the nephron through interaction and discussion is impractical IMO. Some things are meant for group work (like the actual problem solving you see in engineering or business), but most of preclinical medicine needs to be learned from old fashioned didactics.

 

[mimelim]

Interaction is all well and good, but putting 10 MS1's in a room and asking them to learn the intricacies of the nephron through "interaction and discussion" is impractical IMO. Some things are meant for group work (like the actual problem solving you see in engineering or business), but most of preclinical medicine needs to be learned from old fashioned didactics.

Or "preclinical medicine" needs to be re-tooled. The biggest problem with most PBL that I've seen is that schools take their old curriculum and try to apply PBL to it, which is just lazy and isn't going to work.

 

[cbrons]

but most of preclinical medicine needs to be learned from old fashioned didactics.

Especially the "really" basic science stuff like physiology, biochemistry, and histology for example. I will see sometimes in these classes the professors try to implement types of PBL, but most of the stuff is over the head of students who are really just now focused on getting the basic core concepts down. So while they do find it interesting... it's somewhat of a waste of time. Kind of like so-called early clinical experiences which look more like glorified shadowing while you carry around a bunch of overpriced equipment they scammed you into buying during orientation but don't have a clue how to use.

 

[cbrons]

Or "preclinical medicine" needs to be re-tooled. The biggest problem with most PBL that I've seen is that schools take their old curriculum and try to apply PBL to it, which is just lazy and isn't going to work.

You are probably right. It is possible to learn all of the curriculum in PBL format, heck they did that at the University of Illinois in Champaign back in the 70s and 80s (look up the book "Keys to the Asylum" by Daniel K. Bloomfield, M.D. where he talks about the self-study PBL program they had going until the LCME forced them (kind of indirectly, you need to read the book to get the story down) to go back to traditional lecture/lab). People think PBL is a new thing in (preclinical) medical education... it really isn't... it has been around for a few decades now.

 

[D elegans]

I love PBL. Our curriculum is primarily based around PBL, and so long as we have a facilitator who allows it to be efficient, it is a good experience. Of course you'll have some students who only throw out bullsh*t, but for the most part I find it a productive use of my time. While we still have lectures, I think we probably have more "free time" than other schools (I know, no one goes to lecture anyway). I do see how without the right implementation PBL would be completely useless and annoying.

I agree with ArcGurren, I think SDN attracts people who would prefer not to have any kind of curricular involvement and would rather just spend all day studying for Step 1. That's not a critique of those who wish to do this, and I understand the argument. I will say that at least where I go, PBL does foster a cooperative and friendly environment within my class, and for the most part I enjoy learning with/from them. It keeps things interesting, and I think I'd go insane if all I did was sit at home and go over powerpoints/Rapid Review/whatever.

 

[KnuxNole]

Especially the "really" basic science stuff like physiology, biochemistry, and histology for example. I will see sometimes in these classes the professors try to implement types of PBL, but most of the stuff is over the head of students who are really just now focused on getting the basic core concepts down. So while they do find it interesting... it's somewhat of a waste of time. Kind of like so-called early clinical experiences which look more like glorified shadowing while you carry around a bunch of overpriced equipment they scammed you into buying during orientation but don't have a clue how to use.

I agree. It would be painful to learn concepts from people that don't know what they are talking about. And I assume there is no syllabus/lecture notes to study for any exams? I guess the bulk of the studying comes straight from books and tidbits you pick up from group talk. And I assume the topics you have to talk about are the ones they are well versed in, while trying to stay awake when other classmates are talking/mumbling.

 

[notbobtrustme]

It keeps things interesting, and I think I'd go insane if all I did was sit at home and go over powerpoints/Rapid Review/whatever.

It may keep things interesting, but it's such a waste of time. We spent 3 hours on muscle weakness going over like 2 concepts (nmj/nicotinic receptors) and a couple of lab tests which mean nothing to us right now. Med school is more an exercise in time management than anything else and when we have histology, anatomy, cell biology, biochemistry and physiology to learn, spending 3 hours in a stupid group googling a bunch of garbage is a huge waste of time, especially when my group had some idiot ******* refused to take the easy way out.

 

[calvnandhobbs68]

It may keep things interesting, but it's such a waste of time. We spent 3 hours on muscle weakness going over like 2 concepts (nmj/nicotinic receptors) and a couple of lab tests which mean nothing to us right now. Med school is more an exercise in time management than anything else and when we have histology, anatomy, cell biology, biochemistry and physiology to learn, spending 3 hours in a stupid group googling a bunch of garbage is a huge waste of time, especially when my group had some idiot ******* refused to take the easy way out.

I still don't get how some people don't realize that you can google basically anything on the face of the earth and find it. If you can't google it, 99.9% of the time google + uptodate gets you your answer. This is why I don't like working in groups...people who waste my time be refusing to google answers and trying to just think them up on their own. Think you'd remember it better if you knew you actually had the right answer in front of you.

Which is probably why all these old guys running PBL think it's so helpful. The internetz is still a new thing to them and they still remember back in the day when you had to go check out Robbins from the library to answer a path question.

 

[calvnandhobbs68]

Kind of like so-called early clinical experiences which look more like glorified shadowing while you carry around a bunch of overpriced equipment they scammed you into buying during orientation but don't have a clue how to use.

lol gotta love the equipment scam. "Oh you mean I'll never need to have my own otoscope ever because every exam room in every hospital in the US has one? Well I think I'll just spend $200 bucks on it anyway for fun."

 

[Dr Love]

Anything that ends with "-based learning" is a waste of time.

The odd thing, is that there are these obnoxious hyper-enthusiastic med students that love this crap. I really wish someone would smack some sense into them.

 

[mimelim]

lol gotta love the equipment scam. "Oh you mean I'll never need to have my own otoscope ever because every exam room in every hospital in the US has one? Well I think I'll just spend $200 bucks on it anyway for fun."

You seriously bought an otoscope?

 

[ArcGurren]

Interaction is all well and good, but putting 10 MS1's in a room and asking them to learn the intricacies of the nephron through interaction and discussion is impractical IMO. Some things are meant for group work (like the actual problem solving you see in engineering or business), but most of preclinical medicine needs to be learned from old fashioned didactics.

If that's how PBL works at your school then your school has no idea how to actually do PBL

 

[ArcGurren]

Anything that ends with "-based learning" is a waste of time.

The odd thing, is that there are these obnoxious hyper-enthusiastic med students that love this crap. I really wish someone would smack some sense into them.

Sounds like a personal problem bro

 

[SpecterGT260]

Pbl is nice in little chuncks. We have 2 hours a week total and even then it is pretty minimal with heavy facilitator input. I wish they would direct part of that time to guided clinic note writing however. We don't get a lot of input on how to write these except nondescript criticism for notes turned in on a p/f course so nobody improves. I guess I'll find out next year when a resident chews my ass for writing too much/little

 

[calvnandhobbs68]

You seriously bought an otoscope?

No joke we had to. Here it is (I think we got it for cheaper for getting it through the school but it was still a few hundred):

http://www.allheart.com/welch-allyn-diagnostic-set/p/wa97200/

We either had to have it or show them something we had that was "equivalent".

 

[MilkIsGood]

No joke we had to. Here it is (I think we got it for cheaper for getting it through the school but it was still a few hundred):

http://www.allheart.com/welch-allyn-diagnostic-set/p/wa97200/

We either had to have it or show them something we had that was "equivalent".

Hmm I think I go to your school. This is exactly why I had to buy mine. It was around upper $400 i think

 

[FSU2013]

Hmm I think I go to your school. This is exactly why I had to buy mine. It was around upper $400 i think

My school made us buy a $1200 "doctor kit" from welch-allyn - otoscope, fancy ophthalmoscope, BP cuff, stethoscope that is so heavy it will bruise your chest if you walk briskly.

I still haven't forgiven them for making me blow that much money when I even use a different stethoscope now...