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TSR Med Students' Society Part III

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Original post by digitalis
Certainly beyond the level of Barts 1st year, I'm not ashamed to say it. Especially the molecular level stuff.


Or a second year tbh (or maybe I just chose not to learn it in that much detail). Pretty sure it's the former though. FFCrusader will correct me if I'm wrong though.

See what I mean when I say our CVS/Resp Physiology has loads of gaps on the whole...I suppose they had to make room for all the reflective writing we have to do all year round. :nothing:
Original post by Medicine Man
Or a second year tbh (or maybe I just chose not to learn it in that much detail). Pretty sure it's the former though. FFCrusader will correct me if I'm wrong though.

See what I mean when I say our CVS/Resp Physiology has loads of gaps on the whole...I suppose they had to make room for all the reflective writing we have to do all year round. :nothing:


You think I learnt any of the detailed stuff? Have you met me? :p:

I can barely retain the basic stuff :lolwut:

I currently don't remember any medicine what so ever :sigh:
Original post by Kinkerz
Grab!






Do you agree with this course structure for Keele? Specifically the Pre-Clin/Clin Divide?
Original post by carcinoma
Do you agree with this course structure for Keele? Specifically the Pre-Clin/Clin Divide?

Yes. First two years are preclinical: not all that much clinical contact (about 16 afternoon or morning placements throughout the phase). Final three years are clinical years.

What a 'community based programme' is, I'm not sure. Sounds vague and bureaucratic to me.

EDIT: What is that website?
(edited 12 years ago)
Original post by Kinkerz
Yes. First two years are preclinical: not all that much clinical contact (about 16 afternoon or morning placements throughout the phase). Final three years are clinical years.

What a 'community based programme' is, I'm not sure. Sounds vague and bureaucratic to me.

EDIT: What is that website?


Its the WHO Global Directory of Medical Schools. http://avicenna.ku.dk/database/medicine (From our perspective, the List of Medical Schools that the GMC can accept as valid institution for a Primary Medical Qualification)

Its basically do they teach General Practice/community medicine specifically. Which all medical schools do, but only some have a specified emphasis.
(edited 12 years ago)
Original post by carcinoma
Some of it must have been covered, in the first two years?


'Some' of it is not good enough. I would have preferred being taught all of it, so that I didn't have to spend 12 hours a day teaching it myself, but that's another story. And I did not slack during my first two years.

It's not like I am asking for a new method of teaching, this was the way things were done forever up until recently. If you can be arsed to look back through my old posts, I was militant pro-PBL and pro-prosection...looking back now at the huge gaps in my knowledge base, it was all total bo-lax. PBL especially is just teaching on the cheap. Hell, you don't even have to have someone in the field you are studying supervising! (Psychologist supervising O&G? Was like the blind leading the lame)
Original post by digitalis
'Some' of it is not good enough. I would have preferred being taught all of it, so that I didn't have to spend 12 hours a day teaching it myself, but that's another story. And I did not slack during my first two years.

It's not like I am asking for a new method of teaching, this was the way things were done forever up until recently. If you can be arsed to look back through my old posts, I was militant pro-PBL and pro-prosection...looking back now at the huge gaps in my knowledge base, it was all total bo-lax. PBL especially is just teaching on the cheap. Hell, you don't even have to have someone in the field you are studying supervising! (Psychologist supervising O&G? Was like the blind leading the lame)


While Yes, PBL and Self-Directed learning do have their flaws.

I don't think and entirely didactic lecture based programme is any better, while to the individual it would seem like more information was being delivered to them, they would not necessarily retain more anyway.

Also, while yes the PBL sessions at Peninsula are how you describe, but PBL is not really for learning, its for consolidation. Rather than as you put it "the blind leading the lame" we have a series of lectures which give us the spectrum we need to cover and detailed life science sessions with anatomists, and other specialists for the detail.

Which only really leaves bite sized gaps. (assuming you are on the ball in every session, and honestly after two hours of bombardment with information, the third hour is like throwing eggs at a wall, and hoping the wall would fall down)



Even if you were delivered the information you would still have had to spend several hours learning it anyway. Delivery of information /= learning.
(edited 12 years ago)
Original post by carcinoma
Its the WHO Global Directory of Medical Schools. http://avicenna.ku.dk/database/medicine (From our perspective, the List of Medical Schools that the GMC can accept as valid institution for a Primary Medical Qualification)

Its basically do they teach General Practice/community medicine specifically. Which all medical schools do, but only some have a specified emphasis.


the community based question is very strange. how many UK school's have said that they are?


EDIT: to the above - i don't think its a justifable argument that just because more information is given it isn't retained, you retain as much as you want depending on how much you care about the specifics independent of how much you are given (with the obvious tasset that wherever you are you recall enough for your own examinations!).
(edited 12 years ago)
Original post by John Locke
the community based question is very strange. how many UK school's have said that they are?


EDIT: to the above - i don't think its a justifable argument that just because more information is given it isn't retained, you retain as much as you want depending on how much you care about the specifics independent of how much you are given (with the obvious tasset that wherever you are you recall enough for your own examinations!).


Only 11 actually answered the question.

BSMS - No
UEA -1-24%
HYMS - 25-49%
Keele - 1- 24%
Leicester - NO
Newcastle - No
Nottingham - No
Oxford - No
Peninsula - 25-49%
Soton - 1-24%
Warwick - No

EDIT: Agreed, therefore having more information delivered makes little difference.
OK so I phrased that badly, I meant "they would not necessarily retain more")
Original post by carcinoma
Only 11 actually answered the question.

BSMS - No
UEA -1-24%
HYMS - 25-49%
Keele - 1- 24%
Leicester - NO
Newcastle - No
Nottingham - No
Oxford - No
Peninsula - 25-49%
Soton - 1-24%
Warwick - No


Interesting which medical schools chose the highest % (25-49). I'm not sure how they are deciding what % their course is. For example are they including your PBL scenarios that are GPish based? or is there a large % of clinical placements in primary care? also 1-24% i wouldn't really say was particularly primary care focussed, surely almost all medical schools fit into that slot (i.e. all the 'no's!)?

Original post by carcinoma
EDIT: Agreed, therefore having more information delivered makes little difference.
OK so I phrased that badly, I meant "they would not necessarily retain more")


does that really follow? would it not be more appropriate to conclude that increased material only makes a significant difference to the people that are interested enough to retain it? i am tempted to put forward the argument that at least you have the choice if you are given lots of stuff but i think it's so readily accessible these days as long as you have a good general education if you are interested you can explore it on your own. the only real question that comes up then is if exposure to lots of information is useful even to the people who won't explore it specifically on their own due to interest which is hard to say.
Reply 5110
Avatar for Renal
Renal
17
Original post by Dr. Hannibal Lecter
So this is why it's been described as one of the most cushy specialties!
Poor dermatods, sound like they're the new surgeons for bearing the brunt of medical jokes :tongue:
One of the best specialities to pursue academia though.
Reply 5111
Avatar for Renal
Renal
17
Original post by Dr. Hannibal Lecter
Same effect happens in the UK every August but it affects every team, even those that don't have house officers, therefore it's attributed to people changing jobs at every level.
Original post by carcinoma


Also, while yes the PBL sessions at Peninsula are how you describe, but PBL is not really for learning, its for consolidation.


Even if you were delivered the information you would still have had to spend several hours learning it anyway. Delivery of information /= learning.


If PBL was for consolidation only, there would be no need for setting 'learning objectives' and debriefing at the next session.

Your last quote doesn't make sense. Delivery of information is not learning, agreed, but facilitation of learning through explanation and expansion. The learning comes after you gain an understanding of it.

Reading a textbook by yourself and trying to understand it, then being 'taught' by your peers who are at the same level of you sounds like some collective group therapy in alcoholics anonymous. Again, blind leading the lame.
Original post by carcinoma
Only 11 actually answered the question.

BSMS - No
UEA -1-24%
HYMS - 25-49%
Keele - 1- 24%
Leicester - NO
Newcastle - No
Nottingham - No
Oxford - No
Peninsula - 25-49%
Soton - 1-24%
Warwick - No

I understand what you're saying here, but with such a small sample size you can't assert much. I reckon less than 30% of my year would've been able to understand that passage. I don't think that's a bad thing either: I wouldn't look down on my doctor for now knowing it in such detail.

Original post by digitalis
If PBL was for consolidation only, there would be no need for setting 'learning objectives' and debriefing at the next session.

But the learning objectives set are guided surely? They are here. Most groups come out with relatively similar sets of questions. I do most of my learning during the week when I'm doing the work for PBL. Not when I'm in the PBL sessions, and I suspect it's similar across the board.

Reading a textbook by yourself and trying to understand it, then being 'taught' by your peers who are at the same level of you sounds like some collective group therapy in alcoholics anonymous. Again, blind leading the lame.

But you're not supposed to be taught by your peers. You're supposed to have grasped much of it by yourself. PBL in that sense is to clear up any problems you've had with the week's learning.
Original post by Kinkerz

But the learning objectives set are guided surely? They are here. Most groups come out with relatively similar sets of questions. I do most of my learning during the week when I'm doing the work for PBL. Not when I'm in the PBL sessions, and I suspect it's similar across the board.

Doesn't matter if they are guided are not. The fact still remains if they are consolidation sessions, there shouldn't be a need to set tasks, go home, do 'homework' and debrief. They should be renamed 'review sessions if that was the case.

And as for being guided, the problem comes in the said debrief sessions, when everyone is throwing their homework around and there can problems. Firstly, from wrong facts that are 'peer taught' and not picked up on by the lay tutor and secondly when a disagreement comes up regarding to points. All the tutor has to rely on if it is not his field is the tutor notes, which are not comprehensive. So it goes back to my initial problem. The tutor doesn't know, the students don't know and you walk out more confused than when you came in. There is so much time wasting in PBL it is ridiculous. Choosing a 'chairperson', 'brainstorming' with the obligatory whiteboard, doing the ten steps to sobriety and medical school success before being let out of the room...the standard awkward silence at the beginning of a debrief before someone reads the wiki article or cheese and onion under the table and everyone nods sagely...total waste of time.


And at Barts, PBLs topics make up a massive part of preclinical assessments, including ICAs and MBBS Part examination components. On things that have not been taught in lectures.

But you're not supposed to be taught by your peers. You're supposed to have grasped much of it by yourself. PBL in that sense is to clear up any problems you've had with the week's learning.Well, that would depend on your course structure and the emphasis that PBL has in it.


..
get my osce results tomorrow, very strange getting them the same day as a-level results!
Original post by digitalis
If PBL was for consolidation only, there would be no need for setting 'learning objectives' and debriefing at the next session.

Your last quote doesn't make sense. Delivery of information is not learning, agreed, but facilitation of learning through explanation and expansion. The learning comes after you gain an understanding of it.

Reading a textbook by yourself and trying to understand it, then being 'taught' by your peers who are at the same level of you sounds like some collective group therapy in alcoholics anonymous. Again, blind leading the lame.


~80% of the Learning objectives set, are covered by other parts of the course. So to the most degree, it is more about consolidation and solidification.

Which part? What i meant to say, is just because the information is delivered to you and explained to you it does not mean that you wont need to put in X amount of hours to actually understand and learn it anyway.
Hmmm, just my two pence really (mainly about the BL preclin course).

PBL is dodgy sometimes. Yes. I've had crappy tutors; I've also had brilliant tutors. I agree with some points Digi has mentioned:

•

Yes, it can work so much more efficiently if we didn't have the whole chairperson allocation, brainstorming, grouping/numbering issues etc. but then again, getting rid of that would defy the whole 'pbl process', whatever that means. PBL write up's are also pointless but that has been now scrapped for an essay or something for the new second years.

•

I also agree that you sometimes end up memorising things very superficially for the debrief sessions so you don't look like a lazy sod in front of everyone. My sessions have been 'closed book' since FunMed in year one, so I haven't really had someone read (tutor) notes on their lap during the session for a while (we do that as we climb the stairs into the room and put them away once we enter the room :ninja:).

•

Some tutors just have no idea what they are talking about



That’s true, yes.

But it works for me, and this is why:

•

I'm not sure how things were in the past at BL but on the Curriculum 08 course, there is much more time allocated to lectures - we have more contact time than there was in the past. Now what this means is that you essentially consolidate what you have been taught in lectures in the pbl sessions - at times it works the other way round and you have the pbl session first - but the point is things are covered again in some respect later.

•

We have whole year debrief sessions (as in the whole year sitting in the Perrin with a module lead going through the pbl again) even after the debrief sessions for some modules to level out the discrepancy between groups if that does exist.

•

You never go into a pbl session to 'learn' about a disease from your peers - there's no splitting of objectives between the group and no presenting your work to your peers like at other places - I can only think of one major pbl topic that wasn't covered later in a lecture in second year and that was AF (which tbh isn't that difficult to grasp anyway). Everything else was covered again, normally in a lecture. This is the time wasting bit I don't like, but at least the medical school understand we still need lectures to support our learning - thats got to be a good thing on their part, right.

•

The learning objectives brought up in the sessions basically just say " This is a warning: you will cover this either in this pbl and again in some other teaching form so make sure you understand this because it may be assessed" but tbh, no one ever does the ones they don't need to do (especially the psychosocial issues you can always blag in the session). It also works especially well on the spiral curriculum where we revisit systems from year one again because you end up "reviewing the anatomy of the [insert whatever organ]" which you would have covered already in year one, again in year two, because it is related to a pbl. If we didn't have to do that, I would have forgotten so much from year one.

•

We have ICAs once a term or so based around pbls and lectures and that’s good - failing them basically tells you you’re not putting in enough effort to pass the year comfortably. Of course people fail every ICA and still do alright in end of year exams, but that is quite rare.



Of course if you focussed only on pbls and nothing else the way they are here, there will be gaps in your knowledge because you won't be sure if you have covered everything (and probably wouldn't have). The supplementary lectures etc. try to narrow these gaps - that’s why we have these lecture objectives given to us too. I'm usually one to 'defend' the course here at BL (which I suppose the majority of this post has done anyway), but yes I will quite confidently agree that there are gaps in our course (I think there's a lot of emphasis put into communication skills which perhaps doesn't require that much time so early on in the course IMO etc.). That said, I don't think one can attribute these gaps to pbl though - surely that’s just up to the individual and how much they are willing to learn and to what detail - some people go the extra few miles with pbls and do some primary research etc. for the debrief sessions and they certainly have fewer gaps in their knowledge compared to me because I cba. You learn what you need to learn to pass your med school exams wherever you go - it’s pretty much down to your work ethic really and choosing what you think you should learn/what lectures to not bother reading through/how much detail to go into for a pbl etc. to pass the exams and close these gaps. The superficial cramming for a pbl debrief session if you don't do it properly (which might be one of a myriad of causes for these apparent gaps) is exactly the same as the cramming you would do for an exam on a predominately lecture based course if you didn't do the work throughout the year.

Therefore, IMO these gaps are down to:

•

the individuals work ethic

•

and the content covered as part of the course (not necessarily the style of teaching).



My major problem with pbl is the effort required to actually do them, but I would say that since I have major cba moments throughout the year! :p: Tbh, going to one or two lectures that week and making half decent notes should do the work for you anyway. :p: Having said that, for people who like to have things repeated to them more than once for it to stick in or for people who require a bit more time for information to stick in, pbls would work perfectly for them!

Who knows, maybe I'll come back here in a few years and take back everything I've mentioned in this post that is pro-pbl! :ninja:
Original post by digitalis
Doesn't matter if they are guided are not. The fact still remains if they are consolidation sessions, there shouldn't be a need to set tasks, go home, do 'homework' and debrief. They should be renamed 'review sessions if that was the case.

And as for being guided, the problem comes in the said debrief sessions, when everyone is throwing their homework around and there can problems. Firstly, from wrong facts that are 'peer taught' and not picked up on by the lay tutor and secondly when a disagreement comes up regarding to points. All the tutor has to rely on if it is not his field is the tutor notes, which are not comprehensive. So it goes back to my initial problem. The tutor doesn't know, the students don't know and you walk out more confused than when you came in. There is so much time wasting in PBL it is ridiculous. Choosing a 'chairperson', 'brainstorming' with the obligatory whiteboard, doing the ten steps to sobriety and medical school success before being let out of the room...the standard awkward silence at the beginning of a debrief before someone reads the wiki article or cheese and onion under the table and everyone nods sagely...total waste of time.

A lot of our tutors are medically or bio medically trained, so do know the answers when disparity occurs. and All 2nd year PBL sessions are with qualified doctors. Also our 1st PBL session occurs at the start of the case unit, and the first review is not until a week later, so in between that time we have 14 taught hours which cover the seer majority of the learning objectives set. All the groups essentially come out with a very very similar set of learning objectives, just slightly different structure or wording.


And at Barts, PBLs topics make up a massive part of preclinical assessments, including ICAs and MBBS Part examination components. On things that have not been taught in lectures.

Pre-Clinical assessments for us are based mostly around topics covered in our Medical Imaging and Physiology sessions as well as, in clinical skills and lectures. Only a small amount is PBL only.


........
Original post by Medicine Man

Spoiler



Who knows, maybe I'll come back here in a few years and take back everything I've mentioned in this post that is pro-pbl! :ninja:


Our courses are so similar it scares me. If you just change the names of a few sessions/assessments we essentially have the same course structure.


What is a PBL write up? We have never been (well with my facilitators anyway) allowed us to use notes.


"the whole chairperson allocation, brainstorming, grouping/numbering issues etc" I dont really understand what issues?

In your Whole year PBL recap sessions, are they set out in a quiz types setting with explanations of the answers/physiology and anatomy of the answers then a run through of all the things you are supposed to have learnt?
(edited 12 years ago)

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