So, this week saw the start of
our doc-to-doctor teaching sessions. It has been a long build up and so it felt
great to finally put our preparation into action and get on with the reason
doc-to-doctor was set up in the first place – to teach!
As chairman of the committee, I
started the session with a brief introduction and then handed over to one of
our tutors who gave a lecture on the basics of history taking and anatomical
planes. We then divided the student cohort into small groups and spent the rest
of the evening going through practice history taking sessions and short answer
questions. Overall, the evening ran smoothly and I was really pleased with how
things came together. The enthusiasm from the students was incredibly rewarding
and reinforced my desire to get involved with peer assisted learning.
When it came to tackling the
short answer questions, rather than just handing the question sheets out and
expecting students to fill them in, I attempted to employ the techniques of
Socratic questioning that we were introduced to during our PAL training sessions.
I used each question as a starting point for a conversation and tried to
encourage students to think more broadly about why the topic of the question
was important and how it may link with other aspects of the medical course.
Since it was the first time I have attempted such a thing, I really didn’t know
how it was going to be perceived. I was worried that the students may find the
approach tedious, so it was a relief to receive some positive feedback. The
students told me that they much preferred the interactive discussion because it
allowed them to appreciate different ways of looking at a particular problem
and it forced them to consider more wide ranging implications. Other tutors
reported similar findings and so this is certainly a skill that I shall work
towards developing over the next sessions.
When it came to the practice
history taking sessions, I acted out the role of a patient and the students
took it in turns to take a history from me. They all observed each other taking
the history and provided each other with positive and critical feedback. Acting
as the patient rather than the person taking the clinical history was a novel
experience. It offered me a new perspective on the doctor patient relationship
and it showed me that by teaching others, you can really learn a lot yourself! As
the patient, I was much more aware of the students’ body language and was able
to think about how I could adapt my own when speaking with real patients to
ensure that they feel comfortable. I
also became more aware of the need to respond to verbal and non-verbal cues
given by the patient and how praise or a few supportive words can make a huge
difference to a consultation. I aim to bear this in mind for my next round of
clinical practice teaching blocks.
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