Aside from the first-year Introduction to Clinical Medicine course, the surgery clerkship is the first on campus to integrate PBL as a substantial part of its curriculum. During the workshops, he said, students learn to work in small groups, use virtually all of the diagnostic tools that would be available in an actual clinical setting, and begin to learn how to evaluate the contributions of their peers. PBL workshops replace much of the clerkship's case-based teaching, but not the time that students spend seeing patients on surgical services. Last month, the department sponsored a voluntary workshop for surgery faculty interested in becoming PBL instructors. Eighteen full-time faculty participated in the seminar.
Instructors act as coaches with the goal of keeping a discussion on track.
Dunnington predicted that the problem-based learning approach could spread to other School of Medicine clerkships.