From: jgnassi@athena.mit.edu (John Angelo Gnassi)
Subject: Re: A Question/Proposal for "Health Care Consumers"
Organization: Massachusetts General Hospital - Lab of Computer Science
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 15:25:57 GMT


As part of the Family Practice residency at Chestnut Hill Hospital in
Philadelphia, senior residents are required to spend just 5 half days
in an elementary, junior, or high school talking about health.  I spent
one of those half days giving a lecture I prepared on testicular cancer
to 9th graders.  I don't know if it did any good (i.e. will change
outcomes), but it at least made most of them aware of a disease
that strikes beginning in their age group and which most previously
had been unaware of.  They weren't very excited, and asked few
questions.

I spent the other half days at an elementary/junior high school
without prepared lectures, just wandering from classroom to classroom.
Big difference.  The kids there were *starved* for simple knowledge
that I had.  I am not a trained educator, but I doubt that one has to
be in order to teach people who really want to know something.

What did they want to know?  About what germs are and how they are
transmitted, and how to prevent transmission.  How xrays work and what
you can tell from them.  How much blood the heart pumps in an hour and
how one can measure it.  What did Beauregard (a dog) die of (this one
I didn't know).  How common AIDS and HIV are in the world, the US, and
Philadelphia.  Why strep throat is bad for you.  What is safe sex.
How nerve gas works and how exposure can be treated.  How one figures
out the relative dangers of, say, driving in a car, or flying in a
plane (time-distance disctinction).  Why we can't know what's wrong
with someone for certain all the time.  What white blood cells do.
How one develops an immunity to something... why not all things?
Do seatbelts actually save lives.  Is marijuana really bad for you.
What a heart attack is and how you can prevent one.  Why everyone
is worried about getting measles when there's a vaccine for it.
(The measles and nerve gas questions were relevant to current
events in 1990-'1.)

In each class it was easy to maintain relevance, i.e. in the science
class I talked about Doppler sound frequency shifts (which they
already knew something about from earlier that week) and how they can
be used to measure cardiac output.  In math, where they had been
covering probability, we talked about uncertainty and some ways to
deal with it.  In English I talked about the autoimmune damage
to heart valves following strep infection (OK, so I missed the
relevance boat there, but that's what they wanted to know about,
so that's what we talked about!).

When I returned I brought illustrative materials (as Tom Lehrer said,
"'visual aids', as we say in the 'ed biz'").  Xrays of common objects
for young kids to "diagnose" showed that they remembered what I'd told
them about what causes different densities ("No it's not a small metal
ashtray because it's not white; it must be a Reese's." was my favorite
correct answer).  Petri dishes plated with strep and non-strep
bacteria first provoked alarm, then great interest and started a
discussion of how one tells them apart.

These kids weren't just looking for someting to break up their
day.  They really wanted to know things that were easier for
me than their teachers to talk about without extra preparation.
The residents and teachers uniformly applauded this approach.
Perhaps others who've had similar experiences would care to comment
on them.
--
     John Angelo Gnassi			Lab of Computer Science
   jgnassi@hstbme.mit.edu		Massachusetts General Hospital
     "Eternal Student"			Boston, Massachusetts, USA
		"24 years of school down, 2 to go!"