The end

Blog #9

by Nishani

Today is the last day of my selective in medical education in ambulatory internal medicine. My selective partner and I had the wonderful experience of teaching our fellow students today.  We opted to use a case-based learning method.  We created four cases to be discussed over a period of an hour.  Each case was introduced by showing a student a picture of a particular finding on a patient, and this was followed by asking several questions to guide him through the process of making the diagnosis.  We started by asking him to consider a differential diagnosis based on the photograph we showed him. Then, we focused on the aspects of history, physical exam, and investigations that would lead him to a diagnosis.  My partner and I were quite impressed with the way our medical student subject approached our cases.  He said that he had seen many of our cases in the last couple weeks while doing his ambulatory internal medicine rotation, so the concept of recency bias came up again.  However, we all found the cases helpful in reinforcing our knowledge of the disease processes we covered.  We found it especially helpful to have photographs available to provide a visual representation of the findings we would look for on physical exam.  The interactive component of our teaching session allowed for discussion of topics that were related to our case, but were not ones we had thought about including prior to the session. I think this served to enrich our learning experience and we still managed to keep within our time constraints.  Overall, I personally found it to be a very valuable experience, especially in beginning to study for the LMCC exam!

The entire selective experience has given me a new perspective on medical education.  Reflecting on how to teach and learn has been very helpful to my own learning. I hope to take these lessons with me through residency where I’ll be in a position to teach more medical students.  I am very grateful for this experience.  A special thank you to all those who made it possible!

Thanks for reading!