How Physicians Learn and How to Design Learning Experiences for Them: An Approach Based on an Interpretive Review of Evidence Donald E. Moore, Jr., Ph.D.Vanderbilt School of Medicine Researchers from multiple studies over the past several years have reported that there are distressing gaps between the healthcare services that patients receive and those that they could be receiving. These Studies show that many patients do not receive the best possible care, receive suboptimal care, or are victims of errors, despite the fact that approaches to care are improving and demonstrating enhanced outcomes. A variety of approaches have been suggested to address this gap. Continuing medical education (CME) has been a longstanding suggestion. For many years, however, people have expressed concerns about the effectiveness of CME. As a result, confidence in the ability of CME to address the identified gaps in healthcare delivery was not high. But significant work over the past 20 years has demonstrated the effectiveness of CME, if it is planned and implemented according to approaches that have been shown to work
To design learning experiences by self-directed learners requires a number of skills as the ability to: (1) identify resources, (2) design a plan for resource use, (3) make resources available, and (4) work well with teachers, peers, and other resource persons. These competencies and instructions on them have been studied in physicians and physicians-in-training. However, these studies do not consider how students and residents learn to use learning resources in the broader context of their ongoing medical studies.
Goals in this study are to elucidate the natural history of learning to use learning resources and to consider whether this history is consistent with the ways in which physicians approach other learning tasks. Thus, we ask questions including: (1) what circumstances trigger medical students and residents to learn to use any given learning resource?; (2) how do medical students and residents learn about the resources they use?; (3) what do they learn about these resources?; and (4) what barriers do physicians-in-training encounter in learning to use new resources?
It is not enough for a course geared towards medical professionals to be chock full of facts. Rather, the facts need to be presented in a clear and concise way. Moreover, the course materials should be of the best quality — remember, these courses are meant to be geared to doctors, who are amongst the brightest minds in the country and, indeed, the world. This means that above all else, professionalism is a must.
