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Case-based teaching is a teaching methodology that allows for small group,
self directed learning and knowledge acquisition, which in my opinion,
facilitates and encourages critical thinking skills in our students.
This is accomplished by presenting students with real patient case scenarios
in which they discuss and work through in the hopes of developing their clinical reasoning skills.
It's very easy to just de-identify the specimen and see it as only a specimen
and to completely forget about the person who is behind that.
Students need to learn how to think about problems and patients and disease
in a way that they will be using for the rest of their careers.
One thing that we can do is take a case and say,
"This is really happening to a real person, right now.
This person is suffering, they're sick.
How are we going to weed through all the noise, all the laboratory tests,
all the physical conditions, and figure out what's wrong with this person?"
It really leads to fostering better critical thinking and really learning
how to make judgments before being in the situation to see patients.
Student engagement, I think, is a tremendous benefit.
Most of our students are absolutely engaged in the process of working through a case,
which also helps to develop their problem-solving skills as a group and individually.
So for the people down at the RAHC, what did you think about his weight gain?
Student: The weight gain is a little poor for a one month old. He's only gained two ounces.
We'd expect a little more than that so we think it's probably due to the heart defect.
One of the biggest challenges in case-based teaching and learning is actually getting cases.
It is almost always better to find a real case than it is to try to make one up.
In fact, most of the real cases that I have used are the ones that are completely unbelievable.
They're those zebras instead of horses. And we can take real pearls from these
and teaching points and really incorporate them into the curriculum.
It takes faculty time and effort to develop new materials,
particularly if faculty is unfamiliar with a format, that's going to take some time and effort.
Another issue is making sure that your case-based teaching examples are reflective
of the current clinical environment. For example, when I went to PA school 10 years ago,
the information that I learned in school may or may not be applicable
to the current clinical environment. That's why it is extremely important, as educators,
that we are developing cases that are based on up-to-date
scientific evidence and evidence-based protocols.
One of the most time consuming and difficult aspects
of building a case is obtaining the right images and resources
to make the case realistic and the Support Team
in the Teaching With Cases Project can really make this a lot easier
by helping to obtain these resources through a repository or another source,
and also to help with any copyright clearance issues.
In working with this project I've learned that we can take cases
that we use just on paper and put them in a web-based format
so they can potentially be used for all disciplines.
The Teaching With Cases Support Team can provide technical support
and they can also provide guidance based on best practices for case building.
The energy and time spent developing a case is well worth the benefit
in educating the student about a patient case scenario.
We want to reconnect with an individual who's suffering
and do the best we can for that patient.
By using case-based learning early in health professions education,
students are better prepared to perform in their chosen profession.