Self directed learning in PA school?

[marissapa]

Hi guys,

I just found this wonderful forum today and I am excited to interact with you all! I was wondering if any of you are going through a PA program that utilizes a learning technique called "self directed learning" I am attending a program that recently changed their curriculum from traditional learning, which used power points and lectures to students reading chapters out of a book and taking a test on the assigned reading. This "SDL" learning technique is for two of our most important classes (clinical medicine and pharmacology) I was just wondering if most PA programs use this technique of learning because I am struggling with it and so are my grades. We all know that PA school is condensed and our time is limited; however we are assigned hundreds and hundreds of pages to read every week and are expected to pick out important medical details from our reading. I have visited the learning resource center, been in contact with all of our professors; however they just tell me that I have to read and that is it.

I want to make it clear that I do understand that PA education is about being adult learners and that we should not expect the professors to hold our hand while we are going through it. I also understand that we need to utilize the professors as a guide; however I also feel that the professors should teach. I am spending a lot of money to be in my program. If anyone has any suggestions on how to learn from an "SDL" learning technique, I am open to all suggestions!

Thanks!

[foreveryoung]

Find common ground between diseases (for instance diseases with similar symptoms) and drugs and then learn what differentiates them (distinct symptoms, lab findings, treatments). Use your rotation year to cement your knowledge and work on your weak areas... Think about what worked for you before in traditional learning and see if you can adapt that for self-directed learning.

[CJAdmission]

Sounds like a cop-out curriculum. Are they too lazy or cheap to get qualified faculty? Where do you go with questions when you have them? They just tell you to read more?

[mtg1111]

Have you talked with your classmates to see how they have adapted to this curriculum? If I was in your shoes, I would talk with someone in your class who seems to be doing well on the exams. Perhaps he/she can tell you their technique and possibly help you out.

[Just Steve]

welcome to the most expensive self study program you will probably ever encounter. I hope you showed up with some medical experience so at least the book will make sense as you sort through it.

To expand a little on my post...our lecturers are practitioners from the local community who volunteer to come speak to us and are given a copy of our learning objectives as a guide for their talk. The lecturer is not required, and in fact, is not expected to cover the objectives. The school has made it very clear that it is the intent for the speaker to give us clinical pearls of knowledge to help support or clarify our reading, but we will be tested on the material from the book directly.

As a result, in theory, we could skip every lecture given to us in our didactic year and still have a pretty solid chance at passing all the tests. I am not saying the lecture isn't beneficial to the learning process but if we get a wild cat for a speaker who wants to tell us "the real way things work in the world" versus what the book says, and we take them at face value, we could be skewed off track.

hence my comment of things being a self study program. That being said...our objectives are very clear on what they want us to learn and the reading is pretty manageable.

[marissapa]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for replying. Our school will take applicants without medical experience......unfortunately I happen to not have ANY I notice that my classmates who have some type of medical experience still find our new curriculum difficult and have to work hard, but the people who do not are STRUGGLING and working hard. One thing that I love about our class is that we are all very close and the people who are doing well try to help the ones who are not. They will read the chapters that are assigned and try to help us extract the medical information that is important and what is not important. Since I do not know too much about medicine, I think everything is important. I am going to keep plugging along.....Thank again guys

[Ernie]

I'm not sure that this system is any worse than some others. Just sitting in class while some instructor reads the power point slides to you is not all that great, either.

[Mastersoldier13]

Yea i found that after my first semester in PA school, that them reading off slides at a slower pace than i can read it in the book. Yes i go to every class, and some of the other students never went to class and just read and had just as good grades than me. Its all on how you want to learn, lecture bores me but I go to hear stories. I have never worked a day in my life, never studied for anything before college. Had a horrible HS GPA, but i just built up my grades in college and after 2 years in undergrad got into the program, and even in my program I had no problem reading or going to lectures. If you are struggling you need to change something, wether its ur study habits or time manement or something. I still have problems getting to study, sometimes i waited until 2 days before the test to study, yes ik its crazy, my classmates think im crazy and i sometimes wonder how i do it, but its possible. Be positive and dont doubt yourself if you have an idea of a diagnosis.

[Contrarian]

welcome to the most expensive self study program you will probably ever encounter.

Yep....!!!!

PA school has ALWAYS been "self-directed learning"... this is NOT some new concept.
The VOLUNTEER lecturers have always been considered "supplemental" to the required hard-core self study.

Back in the day, I remember a few classmates trying to dispute test grades because they wrote answers that they heard or thought they heard from the volunteer lecturers on the test that were marked as wrong answers. It didn't fly and they were told (by classmates and faculty) that they were given syllabi and a reading list and required to buy $1000 worth of books for a reason. I basically told them that the required TEXT would serve as the ultimate arbiter of all grading disputes. Fortunately, I had learned this from previous nursing and medic training programs.

This is the reason why I NEVER took notes in class during PA school.
I would sit and listen to the lecturer intently to try to gleen a few pearls and get a glimpse of the "art" of medicine... but I never took notes. Why...??? Because I knew that everything that I needed to know was already written down in multiple places in that 4 ft tall stack of books I was required to buy and encouraged to read.

So for my entire program, I would simply bring a snack, sit at the back of the class, and READ about the medical topic from one book. I would only postpone my reading if the lecturer seemed interesting and/or engaging. Then I would go home and READ about the same medical topic from another book. I would then take my young children to their swim lessons and/or martial arts lessons, sit on the side of the pool/gym and READ about the same medical topic from yet a different book. I would usually read about a subject from 3-5 sources (Harrisons, CMDT, 5MCC, WM, CCS, Handouts, AAPA Cert/Recert) ... typically 3-4 times before testing.

So by testing time... I had read about the testable subject extensively from several sources and had used my "3 highlighter" technique to inculcate the material.

Moral of this story:
Self-Directed Learning isn't new...!!! PA school has ALWAYS been "self-directed" so folks whining about it has MANY of us scratching our heads. As a matter of fact, the cost of PA school now-a-days has MANY of us perturbed because we KNOW PA school is self-taught/self-directed learning and that the lectures and preceptors are volunteers. So we can't see why it costs a current student $80k to teach themselves the same info it cost us $15k-$25k to teach ourselves.

[acozadd]

I bought MAYBE 4 books throughout the didactic portion of my education. Nearly all objectives were well outlined and covered in the lectures... Why attend 8 hours of class and get several hundred slides daily of information if that isn't even the information that you SHOULD be learning and that will be tested on? Of course lecturers will throw in pearls but that shouldn't be the focus of lectures. Pearls are nice supplements to the down and dirty info that is needed. IMO people dont pay >100K to be given a list of books to read... At my program we took several courses with the 2nd year med students and their lectures and courses were formatted the same.

Guess that just shows the importance of researching schools and finding which works best for you.

[l.a.lewis]

This is the reason why I NEVER took notes in class during PA school.
I would sit and listen to the lecturer intently to try to gleen a few pearls and get a glimpse of the "art" of medicine... but I never took notes. Why...??? Because I knew that everything that I needed to know was already written down in multiple places in that 4 ft tall stack of books I was required to buy and encouraged to read.

So for my entire program, I would simply bring a snack, sit at the back of the class, and READ about the medical topic from one book.

Interesting approach, but logical. Thanks for sharing. I'll def keep this is mind.

[HappyDay]

Self directed learning is frustrating. I found that making charts for everything is the way I learn best. So, for clinical medicine subjects my chart categories were: Condition, Etiology/Risk factors, Sx, Dx, Tx, and Notes (other important information). Keep it simple. For Pharm: Class (Ex: Anti-arrhythmic), Drug, Mechanism of Action, Indications (on and off label), Side Effects/Contraindications, and Notes (dosing, routes, odd-ball information).

Then, after filling in the chart, I could look at the disease/condition at a glance. I had separate charts for each unit (ex: Anemias, Endocrine issues, Joint Ds)
Any important/deadly item (i.e.: Causes Stevens-Johnson Syndrome) or (Causes Esophageal ulceration) was bolded and colored red. Still, it is quite difficult to know what is important and depending on your text, to know what is a first line treatment, second line treatment, or a 'Gold Standard".

Good Luck.