Part 5 – Our Teaching Session

As a part of the educational requirement of our CEEP selective, AS and I were tasked with leading a 1-hr teaching session on a topic of our choosing. Coming up with what to teach was actually the most difficult part of this assignment. Having been on the receiving end of countless lectures, we empathized with how difficult it would be capture the attention of our audience for the full 60 minutes. We were also well aware that our colleagues were a few short weeks from graduating medical school – and this certainly didn’t help our cause. Curriculum design, in many ways, can be just as difficult. We wanted teach something that was interesting, but not esoteric. It had to be relevant and useful for the general physician, or any doctor, regardless of specialty. We also wanted to make sure that our session was engaging, interactive, and safe. Safe, as in a ‘safe place’ to ask even the “dumb” questions and a safe place to offer genuine, constructive feedback.

The title of our lecture was “3 Neuro Eye Conditions that Should Not Missed in Medicine.” This was a familiar topic for AS and I as he intends on pursuing emergency medicine, and I will be starting a residency in ophthalmology. In our audience, however, there was a future psychiatrist, radiation oncologist, pediatrician and internist  - buy we maintained that regardless of specialty, these three conditions could potentially walk into their clinic and should raise red flags and warrant urgent investigations. Our session covered how to properly assess pupils and how to interpret abnormal findings. We distributed penlights as souvenirs and had people pair up to practice the physical exam. We also utilized a very useful interactive program that simulated different pupillary abnormalities from normal responses, to RAPD, to Horner’s syndrome. We went through 3 cases: Third Nerve Palsy, Temporal Arteritis, and Horner’s syndrome and ended the session with useful resources for the trainee in learning about neuro-ophthalmology. In the end, the session was extremely well received. Our audience was engaged throughout, took notes, requested the slide-deck, and asked very thought provoking questions. They told us that they could certainly apply what they learned today in their own work settings – which ultimately, is what we were hoping for. - AC