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I'm taking a class about teaching Spanish, and the prof let me summarize an article about medical education for an assignment. The English version is below. You may find it useful if you're evaluating different medical school curriculums and/or you're interested in teaching medicine one day.
Feel free to add your corrections, clarifications, opinions, and experiences. If anyone can clarify the differences between discussion, CBL, and PBL, that would be much appreciated. The original article is: To the point: reviews in medical education teaching techniques.
Challenges:
Challenges for teaching medical students include increased demands for clinical time and revenue and thus less time for teaching, the move to competency-based education with appropriate outcome measures, and the further integration of technology into medical education. A review found that ‘‘attending faculty’s clinical teaching ability has a positive and significant effect on medical students’ learning’’.
Lectures:
Lectures are as efficient as other methods at transferring knowledge. However, discussion results in better retention, ability to apply knowledge to new situations, problem solving, and motivation to learn.
Students learned just as much from online lectures as in person lectures.
Lecture best practices include: “the use of lecture to provide structure and to encourage reading; the integration and presentation of problems, conflicting issues, suspense building, and challenges to things usually taken for granted.” Hold attention via frequent “changes in pitch, speed, intensity, movement, demonstrations, and facial expressions.”
Discussion:
Explaining, summarizing, questioning, and relating material to what we already know increases retention. Thus, discussion is good. Start with a common experience, a demonstration, and a video, a case, or a controversial issue. “The purpose of this approach is to get students to reason from specific cases to general principles, which are then applied to new cases.”
Developmental discussion: keep students focused on one aspect of the problem at a time; first formulate the problem, suggest the hypothesis, acquire relevant data, and evaluate alternative solutions.
Case-based learning:
In CBL, teachers describe an actual set of patient symptoms or a problem, then facilitate discussion. Students evaluate alternative approaches, including cost, treatment, morbidity, and emotional consequences. “Students undergoing the case-based approach achieved superior results to the lecture method in understanding, application of concepts, and knowledge scores.”
Problem-based learning:
Steps involved in the PBL process are: presentation and evaluation of the problem; generation of solutions to the problem (hypotheses); inquiry to review the hypothesis including gathering information such as lab tests, physical exam, and interview information; application of the information gathered to the original problem; a review and synthesis of what has been learned and in evaluation of the process.
“Many have questioned whether students involved in the PBL method would acquire a wide enough base of medical knowledge. **** et al randomized medical students studying a medical school epidemiology course to PBL or a traditionally taught course. They found no significant difference in performance on quizzes and exams between the two groups. However, students using PBL self-reported a stronger grasp of epidemiologic principles, and were more enthusiastic about epidemiology and its professional relevance than students in the traditional course. The authors concluded that ‘‘PBL provides an academically equivalent, but personally far richer learning experience….Thus, a wide body of research shows that students studying by PBL curriculum do indeed acquire an equivalent base of medical knowledge. It also seems that students who choose PBL like it.”
Simulation and role-playing:
It appears that simulations, role-playing, and skills lab are particularly effective in the teaching of clinical skills.
1. To the point: reviews in medical education teaching techniques. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2004;191(2):408-411. doi:10.1016/J.AJOG.2004.02.003.
Feel free to add your corrections, clarifications, opinions, and experiences. If anyone can clarify the differences between discussion, CBL, and PBL, that would be much appreciated. The original article is: To the point: reviews in medical education teaching techniques.
Challenges:
Challenges for teaching medical students include increased demands for clinical time and revenue and thus less time for teaching, the move to competency-based education with appropriate outcome measures, and the further integration of technology into medical education. A review found that ‘‘attending faculty’s clinical teaching ability has a positive and significant effect on medical students’ learning’’.
Lectures:
Lectures are as efficient as other methods at transferring knowledge. However, discussion results in better retention, ability to apply knowledge to new situations, problem solving, and motivation to learn.
Students learned just as much from online lectures as in person lectures.
Lecture best practices include: “the use of lecture to provide structure and to encourage reading; the integration and presentation of problems, conflicting issues, suspense building, and challenges to things usually taken for granted.” Hold attention via frequent “changes in pitch, speed, intensity, movement, demonstrations, and facial expressions.”
Discussion:
Explaining, summarizing, questioning, and relating material to what we already know increases retention. Thus, discussion is good. Start with a common experience, a demonstration, and a video, a case, or a controversial issue. “The purpose of this approach is to get students to reason from specific cases to general principles, which are then applied to new cases.”
Developmental discussion: keep students focused on one aspect of the problem at a time; first formulate the problem, suggest the hypothesis, acquire relevant data, and evaluate alternative solutions.
Case-based learning:
In CBL, teachers describe an actual set of patient symptoms or a problem, then facilitate discussion. Students evaluate alternative approaches, including cost, treatment, morbidity, and emotional consequences. “Students undergoing the case-based approach achieved superior results to the lecture method in understanding, application of concepts, and knowledge scores.”
Problem-based learning:
Steps involved in the PBL process are: presentation and evaluation of the problem; generation of solutions to the problem (hypotheses); inquiry to review the hypothesis including gathering information such as lab tests, physical exam, and interview information; application of the information gathered to the original problem; a review and synthesis of what has been learned and in evaluation of the process.
“Many have questioned whether students involved in the PBL method would acquire a wide enough base of medical knowledge. **** et al randomized medical students studying a medical school epidemiology course to PBL or a traditionally taught course. They found no significant difference in performance on quizzes and exams between the two groups. However, students using PBL self-reported a stronger grasp of epidemiologic principles, and were more enthusiastic about epidemiology and its professional relevance than students in the traditional course. The authors concluded that ‘‘PBL provides an academically equivalent, but personally far richer learning experience….Thus, a wide body of research shows that students studying by PBL curriculum do indeed acquire an equivalent base of medical knowledge. It also seems that students who choose PBL like it.”
Simulation and role-playing:
It appears that simulations, role-playing, and skills lab are particularly effective in the teaching of clinical skills.
1. To the point: reviews in medical education teaching techniques. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2004;191(2):408-411. doi:10.1016/J.AJOG.2004.02.003.
