Blog 8

My original inquiry was: Why and how is it important for medical experts to be intellectually curious, intentional and mindful professionals? 

Over the weeks when I looked through the evidence and the implications surrounding this claim; I have revised my claim to read as the following:In the field of medical education; competencies such as communicator, collaborator, manager, health advocate, scholar and professional have risen as priority items to be deemed as facets that augment the medical expert.  

The demand for these competencies has emerged from societal expectations, as well as, the need for physicians to be equipped with the attitudes and skills needed to flourish in the system. Thus it is meaningful and relevant to the cliental and the society they serve. As a teacher, expertise of the subject is rarely sufficient to be a viable teacher. The competencies associated with the role such as compassion, communication, collaboration, student advocate, manager and professionalism are attitudes and skills that add to the characteristics of being an effective and affective teacher. If we explicitly emulate these characteristics in the process of teaching, we actually create a learning environment that is infused with these attitudes. The attitudes however, are not charged ions and cannot be absorbed by the students unless the students are primed with receptors (awareness). Similar to what we see with medical education. The competencies have to be emulated with exemplars that are radical and informative at the same time to catch the attention of the audience and transend into a transformational learning.

Transformational learning is learning that becomes a part of the learner. Learning environments that foster critical thinking, reflective practices, creative and experiential learning evokes transformational learning. The kind of experiential learning provided with a dissection lab (as described in my second blog how more that anatomical details are learned here), standardized patients (as described in previous blogs that students realize the magnitude of personalized communication and doctor-patient relationship), SIM lab (where automated  mannequins that simulate various clinical conditions are mimicked) students experience the whole idea of thinking quickly and sharply to make the appropriate decision to deal with the crisis. 
So far we have the learning objectives (LO) mapped to the teaching methods. The next stage is the assessment of the skills and attitudes. The direction to the competencies if outlined in the LO draws the students attention to it. If the teaching methods emulate the appropriate competencies explicitly, then students then feel more prepared to embrace the competencies. When students express the competencies if they are rewarded with repeated affirmation these competencies could be conditional responses. 

Assessments to measure the learning can be multilayered. The cognitive domain could be coupled with the affective domain. Generating rubrics do not completely irradiate personal biases of the assessor but does limit the chances of the results being shadowed by them. Until such time as robots will assess these domains it is not possible to eliminate the personal opinions and biases compeletly.  

Thus, I infer that information is the logos that make logical sense of why they are learning what they learn. When competencies are integrated into the learning we add the pathos aspect and we filter the product of logos and pathos with ethos to remove personal biases and misconceptions. 


Thank you peers and profs for your feedback, which, contributed to my thinking process.