Clinical Teaching Skills Course Was Awesome!

Madhvi Deol

Radiology Resident, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
PGY3

The clinical teaching skills course was a great introduction to important concepts in upper level medical education. I am interested in working in education during my career and this course has given me a lot to think about.

It was enlightening to formally discuss how learning motivation can impact success rate.  While I intuitively realized that learning-orientation is beneficial, I didn’t realize how much it influences overall performance and happiness. In many ways, medical training encourages performance-orientation due to the emphasis on testing and evaluations.

Mock teaching sessions with feedback

I think it is important to shift medical education towards a more learning-oriented environment. For example, evaluations could be geared towards individual improvement

rather than a ranking system/comparison to peers. My feeling is that such a culture shift could have positive impact on medical students and residents in other ways as well. A more individually supportive culture would likely reduce burnout as well. 

The discussion about common challenges in clinical teaching was also helpful. In particular, I learned creative strategies on how to simultaneously teach residents at different training levels. As residents, we give several presentations to our cohort and I have always found it challenging to plan lectures that are educational to both junior and senior residents.  In particular, I liked the idea of have senior residents explain concepts to the more junior residents because this would keep each of the residents involved and would allow senior residents to practice their teaching skills.

For my own personal learning, several of the concepts in adult learning were also useful. I often find myself forgetting material I have learned and this feels very inefficient. I think I can approach my learning more systematically and hopefully have a positive impact. For example, after reading material, I will try to answer certain questions about the material, so that I am actively retrieving this information. I could also accumulate these question/answers and try to do the same process one week later and review concepts that I have forgotten.

 

I highly recommend this course. I gained practical tips for my day-to-day learning/teaching and gained food for thought regarding medical education in the broader context.