Why we should change basic science teaching in medical school

Last night I watched a brilliant TED talk – Sal Khan: Let’s teach for mastery — not test scores – Ted Talk 2016 He makes the point that learners need to master the basics prior to attacking the next steps.  As we consider this in medicine, how do we really learn pathophysiology if we do not understand the physiology. Here is the challenge.  Most basic science teachers suffer the Curse of Knowledge. We need a commission of clinicians and clinical educators to identify the basics.  Few students and residents understand the basics, but they do remember various arcane knowledge. We should change how our learners receive the information.  We should standardize the basics, and require that our new medical students clearly understand the true basics.  Until they develop mastery of those topics, they should not proceed. We could define the basic anatomy that every medical student should understand.  We could define the physiology, the biochemistry, etc. Our medical students need mastery, and I suspect desire mastery.  They want targeted learning but they do not want to have lectures that miss that point. Too often the Curse of Knowledge gets in the way of education.  We could fix that problem.  Sal Khan’s talk explains the path, and the only question is whether we will listen.
Source: DB's Medical Rants - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs