Category Archives: Opinion

Stop Feeling Useless – How to Improve Your Shadowing Experience

Premed blogMore often than not, shadowing is a pain. Getting the honest attention of a doctor as a pre-med student regularly ends as a futile attempt at trying to live out some dramatic fantasy. As a requirement for medical school, shadowing is a necessary evil.

Most students put too many expectations on their ideas of what shadowing will be like – I know I did – and thus leave the door wide open for disappointment. It’s not our fault! We’re entitled to our expectations and a lot of times they’re valid.  Shadowing, however, is one experience that left me wanting.  Does it have to be that way?

Having discovered JoMI, I am here to say: it does not.  As someone entering medical school, I’m compelled to share my opinions on how JoMI can make shadowing as a pre-med, and presumably a med student, better meet our expectations.

Continue reading Stop Feeling Useless – How to Improve Your Shadowing Experience

Surgical Video and JoMI in the World of Flipped-Classroom Education

BlogPicFinal1The flipped-classroom model is making waves in medical school education. In the past two years, the medical schools of Stanford, Duke, UCSF, University of Washington and University of Michigan have been working together to develop a revolutionary flipped classroom course in immunology and microbiology. Rather than learning from textbooks and lectures, students are to study these topics outside of class through specially designed video case studies. In the classroom, students will practice clinical decision-making as a team, even during the first two years of medical school.

A flipped classroom is so called because it inverts the traditional classroom structure of in-class lectures and out-of-class problem solving. The model requires students to watch video lectures in preparation for class so that class time can be used for personal interactions with teachers and other students. While such an arrangement may seem feasible for non-surgical higher medical education, as in the cases of immunology and microbiology, we might ask if, why, and how the flipped-classroom model is appropriate for surgical education.

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Diatribe on Medical Education

RCYxH I am a medical student, and I do not attend lectures. Given the sheer volume of information medical students are expected to learn (or memorize for examination purposes), attending a lecture can be very inefficient. Obviously, not all students share my habits, but anecdotal evidence (of my peers in medical programs across North America) suggests that a significant proportion of students (if given the option) do not attend lectures in person. Most students read the instructor’s slides (to become familiar with the learning objectives, again for examination purposes), and listen to audio or video recordings of the lectures (often at 2x normal playback speed) in the weeks leading up to an exam. Continue reading Diatribe on Medical Education