Surgical journal clubs: A bridge connecting experiential learning theory to clinical practice.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Clinical Competence↗
Biomedical subjects
Mark H Gelula
Publications and source records attributed to Mark H Gelula.
Teaching students to question.
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the study was to teach medical students the strategies of critical questioning to determine the effect on students' critical thinking skills, confidence in their ability to ask questions, and interaction between student and instructor. STUDY DESIGN: Workshops were developed to teach medical students how to systematically ask critical questions. Sixty-two consenting students in their third-year obstetrics and gynecology clerkship were divided according to alternate rotations to either attend the workshops (n = 28) or not (n = 41). RESULTS: Medical students who attended the workshops scored higher on the California Critical Thinking Skills Test mean total score (study group 25.1 [+/- 0.7 SEM] vs control group 22.9 [+/- 0.6 SEM], P = .028), subscales of inference (12.6 [+/- 0.3 SEM] vs 11.2 [+/- 0.3 SEM], P = .003), and of deductive reasoning (12.7 [+/- 0.4 SEM] vs 10.9 [+/- 0.3 SEM], P = .001). CONCLUSION: Teaching students to ask critical questions improves critical thinking as measured by the California Critical Thinking Skills Test.
Clinical Clerkship↗
Using standardised students in faculty development workshops to improve clinical teaching skills.
PURPOSE: We describe the use of standardised students (SSs) in interdisciplinary faculty development programmes to improve clinical teaching skills. Standardised students are actual health professions students who are trained to portray a prototypical teaching challenge consistently across many encounters with different faculty participants. METHODS: The faculty development programmes described focused on the skills of providing feedback and brief clinical teaching. At the beginning of each session, each participant was videotaped in encounters with 2 different SSs. Using microteaching (an instructional method in which learners view short segments of their own videotaped performance and discuss the tapes with a facilitator, consultant or other workshop participants), each group of participants and instructors reviewed the tapes and reflected on the encounters, providing immediate feedback to participants and modelling different approaches to the same teaching problem. The same process was repeated with more complicated scenarios after 2 weeks and again after 6 months offering reinforcement, further practice and more sophisticated development of the strategies learned. Participants completed post-session evaluations and a follow-up telephone survey. RESULTS: A total of 36 faculty members from the colleges of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and nursing participated in workshops in 2000-01. The workshops were rated as highly relevant to participants' teaching, and most participants reported that they had learned a great deal. Participants most appreciated reviewing the videotaped interactions, the feedback they received, the interactions with their colleagues, the interdisciplinary nature of the groups and the practical focus of the workshops. CONCLUSIONS: Standardised students provide a high fidelity, low risk, simulated environment in which faculty can reflect on and experiment with new teaching behaviours. Such encounters can enhance the effectiveness and impact of faculty development programmes to improve clinical teaching skills.
Clinical Competence↗
Microteaching and standardized students support faculty development for clinical teaching.
OBJECTIVE: If faculty development programs are to have impact, we believe they should be made up of several self-reinforcing workshops that provide opportunities for behavior review, practice, reflection, and reinforcement within a context of interdisciplinary perspectives. A program was developed that supports these four activities and includes clinical faculty from medicine, dentistry, nursing, and pharmacy. DESCRIPTION: At the University of Illinois at Chicago we have focused our efforts to improve clinical teaching through a program of two parallel courses. One course focuses on the "one-minute teacher" approach to clinical teaching. We call this course "Teaching-on-the-Fly," reflecting what many of our faculty attendees have suggested they do. The second course is "Feedback Strategies." The two courses are identical in format, which is a series of three three-to-four-hour small-group workshops of not more than eight participants. The first two workshops in each series are titled "Teaching-on-the-Fly I and II" and "Feedback Strategies I and II," respectively. Workshop I is separated from Workshop II by two weeks. During this hiatus faculty are urged to practice the skills learned and to reflect on what worked and what did not work in Workshop I. Six months following both series' Workshop II, "Advanced Teaching-on-the-Fly" and "Advanced Feedback Strategies" workshops are held. Each workshop begins with videotaping of two separate teaching encounters in which each participant interacts with standardized students. Standardized student and clinical faculty interactions are meant to mimic typical teaching and feedback situations. Teaching encounters are limited to five minutes, maximizing the similarity to the stress and frenetic quality of many of today's clinical settings. In Workshop II and in the advanced workshops the standardized students offer one positive comment to the faculty immediately following their encounter. Students are taught how to give this feedback. Immediately after videotaping, faculty adjourn to a small-group discussion. Workshops consist of reflective discussions during the review of each participant's videotape, brief lectures, and responsive comments and instruction by the workshop leaders. Participants are asked to reflect on each workshop and to bring examples of problems and opportunities gained to succeeding workshops in the series. DISCUSSION: Several theories support these clinical teaching workshops. (1) Outcomes research in continuing medical education suggests the need for ongoing reinforcement, which we do structurally through the three-session model. (2) We use a classical microteaching approach to develop insight and self-awareness. Each videotaped encounter is reviewed, stopped at key points, and discussed by the entire group. These discussions commonly open up after the workshop leaders ask questions such as, "What were you thinking there?" or "What were you trying to do?" or "What would you ask next?" (3) We emphasize the importance of knowing-in-action and the related reflection that guides action in practice. (4) The quality of the workshops is enhanced using standardized students, whom we carefully train and use repeatedly. At least two students have worked with us from their first years through their final clinical years. We are currently examining the program's impact through videotape review.
Education, Medical, Continuing↗