Are you asking students questions or “pimping?”

One of the most respected and skilled clinician-educators — of course, he is an infectious diseases specialist — at our institute came into my office, sat down and immediately starting eating pretzels. “Let me know what you think about this,” he said between bites. He went on to recapitulate a recent interaction he had with the members of the internal medicine team (medical students, house staff and the attending physician) about a week ago. He described a presentation to our emergency department of a young woman with a headache, neck stiffness and fever, who was previously well and had young children at home who were currently ill. He reported the lumbar puncture results to the house staff — the results included a mildly elevated protein level, normal glucose level and pleocytosis with a predominance of neutrophils and monocytes. He then asked the house staff to formulate a differential diagnosis and explain their reasoning for said diagnoses. Later, he addressed the case again and changed the values of the cerebrospinal fluid on the patient to clearly illustrate a bacterial source rather than a viral source, and he asked this question: “The pharmacist is standing at the Pyxis machine asking what medications to give. What are you going to tell her?” Granted, I was not present for any of these interactions, but the vignette seemed more than reasonable to me. He was clearly trying to teach and have the house staff work through the differential diagnosis of derang...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Education Medical school Residency Source Type: blogs