Day 1 - Afternoon

Dr. Schwartzstein taught us about critical thinking and clinical reasoning.  He emphasized that we must “work the problem.” He expanded on the dual process theory that Dr. Hayes introduced this morning. We also learned the importance of accepting uncertainty. It is our job to help learners THINK! We need to move away from memorization and focus on thinking skills. Dr. Schwartzstein introduced some challenges of AI that we will delve further into tomorrow. One big take home point is to change “differential diagnoses” to “hypotheses” – what do you think? Will you give it a try?  We challenge you to try it – in your notes, on your ward team, however you want!!For links to some papers on critical thinking from Dr. Schwartzstein and Dr. Hayes check out - @BIDMC_Education

Our second talk of the afternoon on small group teaching was co-taught by Dr. Laurie Fishman and Dr. Sarah Fleet. They modeled small group teaching by having everyone participate in small groups. Dr. Fleet was explicit about the intentional instructional design decisions that were made for the session and encouraged participants to think through those decisions when they are creating sessions (how many small groups, how much time in the group, what are the instructions etc...). 

Dr. Fishman shared some great tips on creating a safe learning environment by being comfortable with silence and asking questions that don’t have a clear right answer.

They left us with these take homes:

·      Write the case to guide learners

·      Prepare the logistics (names, place, technology)

·      Introduction (include ground rules)

·      Use Blue-Green questions

·      Don’t be afraid of silence

·      Flexible order of learning points

·      Plan how to handle challenging learners

·      Sum up what was learned and not learned

If you want to learn more about small group teaching, check out Dr. Fishman’s case of Dr. Novel and Dr. Sage and all associated resources and materials on mededportal: https://www.mededportal.org/doi/10.15766/mep_2374-8265.9838

 Dr. Quinn Capers  ended our first day with a powerful talk on Implicit Bias in Medicine and Healthcare.  He started the talk getting us all talking about bias from images we are exposed to (billboards, advertisements).  He taught us that we all have implicit biases but they CAN BE overridden. Awareness is the first step! Dr. Capers shared these 4 strategies to reduce/neutralize implicit bias: 1) Common identity formation 2) Perspective taking 3) “Consider the opposite” 4) Counter-stereotypical exemplars. To read more from Dr. Capers check out this from ATS Scholar – a must read for all

https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/full/10.34197/ats-scholar.2020-0024PS