Lecturing in the classroom produces lecturing in the exam room - Dr. Saul Weiner, Contextualizing Care

If there is anything that requires critical thinking skills, it’s taking care of people who are ill. When someone is ill they have more than a disease. In fact, the clinician is presented with an individual whose homeostasis has been disrupted. Before you get sick, you have a routine and things are in some sort of balance: you go to school or work, find time to connect with friends and family, do chores, pay bills, take a shower, have sex, get rest etc…But when illness sets in, the precarious balance that is life before is perturbed. An effective clinician sees all this, and approaches the ill patient with a wide angle lens. He or she is able to discern what matters in a particular context. Our research on contextualizing care indicates that that ability is in short supply. A major culprit for such a profound competency deficit may be attributed substantially to a medical education process that still relies heavily on lecture. First, a reminder, for those who have been out of school for a while….A colleague of mine with a lifetime of experience facilitating adult learning writes: http://www.contextualizingcare.org/2015/07/why-lecturing-medical-students-has-got-to-go/