Abstract
Growing recognition of the urgent need for reform in medical education was underscored by a recent AAMC report which recommended the promotion of self education, problem solving and life long learning. We have implemented an instructional module in human genetics for first year medical students which achieved these and other desirable educational goals. During their second week in medical school each student was assigned a different entry from the 1983 edition of McKusick's Mendelian Inheritance in Man to revise and update in a semi-structured format. The resulting entries were discussed in small sections, reviewed and compiled to provide each student with a compendium of genetic disorders. Instructors found that nearly all of the important principles of Mendelian inheritance could be illustrated with the random sets of entities assigned to each discussion group. Students learned to use the library, gained an appreciation of the importance of genetic disease and were able to master clinical and experimental material with surprising ease. More than half the students spent 11-20 hours on the assignment and reviewed from 6-10 articles in detail. The caliber of the entries was significantly correlated with the time spent on the exercise, but not the number of papers reviewed, prior knowledge of the disease, the frequency with which a dictionary was used or undergraduate exposure to genetics. Student response to the exercise was favorable and raised the question of the extent to which this approach can be generalized to other disciplines.
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Bodurtha, J., Townsend, J., Proud, V. et al. 763 THE CURRICULARIZATION OF McKUSICK: AN INNOVATION IN MEDICAL EDUCATION. Pediatr Res 19, 238 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-198504000-00793
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-198504000-00793