You meet mon 8-10 and again on fri 8-10. Things go well if you have a good tutor and he can keep you on track. On mon you well be given a scenario video or on paper w/a patient presenting with blah blah blah. You gather some patient data, think of a hypothesis, formulate an action plan and find some learning issues. Then they give you some more 411 and you repeat process again data, hypothesis, action plan, issues. You do this a few times narrow down your hypoth, and rule out other things. With 8 people in your group you divvy up the learning issues, 2 of those people will be assigned a journal club article to look up on the newest 411. There are some major learning issues that may or may not be assigned but they are important enough that everyone should learn them. The major learning issues are normally covered in lecture threw out the week. On fri when you meet again you take what you've learned in class and looked up and discuss the case. In the course of the discussion you present your learning issue.
The good thing about the way it is done is that the important things you need to know will be covered in class. Meeting on Monday just sets you up for how to approach and think of things while learning the material in lecture. Example, your case on Monday is a lady with double vision and blind spots when she looks a certain direction. Threw out the week you get lectures on the anatomy of the eye, physiology of vision, routing of neuro pathways etc. So all during lecture your thinking to yourself what is causing her symptoms, and then a light bulb goes on during a lecture and you go a hah. This process just makes it more salient for me at least, then just memorizing notes. PBL also fine tunes your ability to look things up. My suggestion uptodate.com, emedicine.com, merck.com and of course google, but if you are assigned to look up the journal club article go to pub med (clincial queries), jama, and nejm.
So unlike other schools that are heavy pbl, if you memorized lecture alone you could pass the blocks. PBL is to supplement your learning, and most of the learning issue if they are important will be covered in class. Having a classmate go over them is redundant but it helps me to retain things when things are gone over and over again, especially the important stuff. And for the learning issues that you did look up you do tend to remember those really well.
Suggestions to not be totally clueless in pbl like I was:
Block 1 get a high yield cell and molecular bio book only about 100 pages read it before like first week of school. It is a good review of stuff you should of learned in undergrad. Get BRS path and read the general pathology section along with the class so when you're being lectured about inflammation or neoplasia read along the corresponding chapters in BRS. Also get Medical Micro & Immuno by levinson & jawetz and read the immuno section when they are covering immuno in lecture.
Block 2 get BRS physio read the cardio, renal and respiratory sections early in the block or before school starts. Do this as a primer for the course so when things come up in pbl you know a little something, or when they come up in lecture things sound a little familiar.
Block 3 get High Yield Bio Chem read this early in the block or before school starts. Also read the endocrine and reproduction part out of BRS physio, again as a primer for pbl and the course.
Block 4a get HY neuro anatomy this book is a must have and again use early so you're not playing catch up, but things actually are familiar to you.
Block 4b get HY behavioral sci. and do the same thing.
Threw out all blocks make sure you are learning the material from lecture because knowing this stuff alone you can pass the blocks. Dean Parker once told us that "a 99% on a test counts the same as a 71%, both are passing". Follow along with HY histo during the blocks as well. I only read review books before the actual course because I'm a slow learner and need many passes to learn things, to many raves during undergrad has left my memory not as good as it used to be. This method worked really well for me and might not be for you but is just a suggestion. I did save a ton of money on books cause I didn?t buy any of the required text books all I bought were review books, and anatomy atlas. Sorry about the grammar and spelling errors just taking a brake from studying for finals tomorrow. Yes finally summer after tomorrow, gotta go back to studying psyche stuff.
). Let me just say that there are many variables to a successful group. The most important are the participating constituents (STUDENTS more important than the director/facilitator). There were some groups I was in that the facilitator was a complete ***** (i.e. he not only interrupted us,but fed us WRONG info). Most of our groups were 6-7 students (ideal in my opinion). I was never up front about the idea of doing a freaking 15-20 min presentation on just one topic while learning the other topics from other students some of whom had no idea what was the pertinent information. I LOVED it when everybody read all the assignments and just came to group to DISCUSS and go over any questions that anyone had. The relaxed atmosphere where you didn't have to present anything worked the best with 95% of the students. AND if you get that superstud in your group than you are golden for that rotation. Lets face it, i could use my time much wisely if i didn't have to make up freakin posters for everything that I read for the group. I will say this that almost all the groups at the end of the 2nd year were using that relaxed/open way of just DISCUSSING the issues in the cases, and everyone was getting a lot more out of it. AND it showed: Our class average step 1 score : 227. So i think that PBL works with a little direction up front, then followed by mainly student led groups.
