Teaching is a blast! As an attending, I love to employ offbeat methods, with absurdity and humor, at times skirting the edge of political incorrectness, all for the purpose of enhancing one’s medical education.
Educating medical students and residents by practicing physicians is a tried-and-true element of medical education, a practice dating back through the ages, where those without formal education in the art of teaching provided instruction. This tradition continues in medical education today, where the majority of teaching—including formal lectures—is carried out by the doctors within and outside of the institution, as well as by residents and even the medical students themselves. I certainly had no formal training in didactics or the art of oration. We sort of learned it on the fly, starting early in med school, periodically giving short lectures on medical topics to a classroom of 15-20 other med students, using drawings marked onto transparent celluloid illuminated on a wall with an overhead projector (I’m dating myself, but this was before the age of the personal computer and PowerPoint).
Medical learning transpires well beyond books, lectures, and labs. It entails a full-on dive right into the heart of patient care, particularly during the clinical years of medical school and deep in the throes of residency. Yet, didactic lectures are still helpful in supplementing the clinical education experience, bringing to light current and clinically relevant knowledge that may not be readily learned while deep in the midst of live patient care. As one may surmise, science-driven and data-saturated lectures can get, shall we say, a bit boring, leading to undesirable dozing.
Oft-used teaching methods to strike and keep attention include humor—the more hilarious, the better—the dirty or obscene mnemonic, and shocking pictures and videos. Videos or motion pictures were rare back in my day. I vividly recall the motion pictures on parasites and human copulation—two separate topics—in my first year at the Medical College of Wisconsin back in the late 1980s. The video of wriggling worms released from body cavities was both disgusting and absorbing—you couldn’t avoid staring at the screen, much like some folks do when passing a gruesome car accident.
Rumor had it that the lecture on sex contained 30-40 minutes of filmed footage of a couple going at it, so my roommate and I knew this was one we could not miss. This particular lecture, unfortunately, occurred on one of the coldest days in January, when both my car and that of my roommate (we were both from California) would not start due to the subzero temperatures. Desperate not to miss this lecture, we frantically called a couple of classmates in the next apartment building, who happened to be two females. Fortunately, these two Wisconsin natives knew a thing or two about proper vehicle winterization and happily took us aboard. Brimming with anticipation, my roommate and I couldn’t stop talking in the back seat about the impending film-fest, while the two young ladies up front politely smiled, wondering if Californians always acted this way or if it was merely a universal male thing. A time or two, I got one of them rolling her eyes.
Yes, we were trained to become respectable doctors, but anything within grasp to keep much-needed concepts locked in our heads was—and still is—paramount.
This is where creativity comes into play. Doctors, even those not practicing in an academic center, are often asked to provide didactic lectures to residents and medical students. Didacticism itself is a philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in a work, including literature or art, a term derived from ancient Greek. As such, I view lectures as an art form.
To this end, I try to add a bit of entertainment to the material, the same canon I hold when creating blog posts and educating patients. I usually do my own artwork, often using drawings I’ve done before (for my website or blog) or create new ones specifically for the lecture. I’ll use case presentations of patients I’ve seen in the past (keeping their anonymity, of course), a common practice among teaching physicians, but I’ll add some nuance specific to the patient, something they did or said that was moving, funny, or outlandish, which brings color to the presentation and adds a human touch. Like many teaching doctors, I often use photos taken during surgery or in the clinic setting. Material created from personal experience seems more meaningful and instructive.
All of this takes a bit more time, but the process itself is absorbing, and the delivery is a real blast—at least for the presenter. This keeps things fresh and alive and is one form of enhancing your occupation by being creative in your work, by bringing you into your workplace. All of this reminds me why this profession is so fulfilling.
Randall S. Fong is an otolaryngologist and can be reached at his self-titled site, Randall S. Fong, as well as his blog.
