AbalaTips 101: How to Approach Other Subjects --> ACTIVE LEARNING

 Good day mga ka-Abalahin, welcome to AbalaTips 101, today we will discuss some special subject and how to apply active learning on them. These are subjects that maybe included in the board exam hiddenly since they are not included in PLE thus, it may be mistaken as a minor subject but in fact they are not, these subjects will include the following

- Psychiatry

- Clinical or Applied Nutrition

- Emergency Medicine

- Rehabilitation Medicine 

- Introduction to Medicine

- Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics

- Clinical Toxicology

- Surgical Pathology

- Radiology

These are important subjects since you will apply this when you are in the clinicals already, in the Philippine Licensure Exam for Physicians, yes they sometimes may be included in the exam so never let go down on this subject, as I emphasized in my blog on "is there a minor subject?" 

Disclaimers:

 A, This AbalaTip is not intended to invalidate or to mention that your learning method is wrong, but rather this is a guide and to emphasize the advantages of active learning in medical school

B. Take note this will involve the correlation of two topics of my blog which is Visual Learning, Analytical skills and Active Learning, however those two will only be applied to this blog and other subjects discussed individually as well. If you do not read those blogs, I would suggest you read those two blogs first before reading those since it will give you a hands-on application of blog. Pls click the title on the post below to read more about those blogs

1. Visual Learning sa Philippine Medical Schools- ni Dok Juan Abalahin  

2. AbalaTips 101: Active Learning Strategies in Philippine Medical Schools

Again the goal, assuming that you had already read the Active Learning Strategies in medical school is to reach the 90% retention from at least 50% as shown in the pyramid below

Let us bisect the subjects into Medical Jurisprudence and Legal Medicine as different subject and look at the tips that we can provide the different tips on how to approach this subjects.

Ok let us discuss on how to approach this subjects however, the lesson here is not to let your guard down with these subjects since these subject may be helpful 

- PSYCHIATRY

 These is a subject that has criterion from both DSM-5 for Mental Health, and ICD-10 in newer textbook, take note of the table, as these are really important to be recognized for a person, for example; Major Depressive Disorders, Anxiety etc, these may not be recognized but they are the common mental health diseases, the goal here is how to diagnose these diseases, these can be in the form of bulleting the importance like epidemiology, prognosis, treatment (boh pharma and non-pharma) and prevention plus table, mental status exam is also important to be known and applied, 

- APPLIED NUTRITION

One of the most tiring subject since these will deal a lot of principles of nutrition, the trick for active learning here is know on how to use the food exchange list, and what medical nutrition therapy will be done, these is mostly an application subject, in the pyramid above, it will go as much as 75% retention since this is like application to a real patient already

- EMERGENCY MEDICINE

This is a typical clinical subject usually have the clinical subjects outline, however this is an emergency setting, goal is to learn how to do CPR properly and clinical diseases treatment done in the ER. For the active learning bullet form and picturing of the most important facts will be applicable in this subject, just like on how to do with a typical clinical subject know the most outstanding epidemiology, clinical manifestations, and so on.............

- REHABILITATION MEDICINE

 This subject is a clinical subject with a twist, since there will be new topics that are here such as prosthetics, orthotics, apply here on the principles behind these treatment, also it has exercises, types of massages etc. Application of the extremities on gross anatomy will be of great importance in this subject, know also the classification, METs of work, the thing here is to bulle the important aspects of this subject.

- INTRODUCTION TO MEDICINE

 This is one of the bridging subject between your pre-medical course and medicine proper, the thing here is to know the important aspect which you will need for your medical career.

- CLINICAL PHARMACOLOGY AND THERAPEUTICS

 This is an application of not just Pharmacology, here you will learn also on the Clinical Practice Guidelines, and books such as Ferris or Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment, this is a Horizontal-Vertical Learning Correlation scheme of subject and apply treatment to the patient, benefits and risk of drugs must also be known in this subject

-CLINICAL TOXICOLOGY

 In this subject is the opposite of Pharmacology, but Pharamcology method can be used here, create your own table but instead of mechanism of action, it will become a mechanism of toxicity, not just drugs but also include metals, plants, animals, and environment. Tabulation method will be useful here and correlation of other subjects.

-SURGICAL PATHOLOGY

This is a visualization subject, in which you will se slides again of important diseases, importance here is to known how did it arrive to that state, characteristic morphology, and stand out immunohistochemistry which could diagnose (can be correlated to surgery) 

- RADIOLOGY

This is again an application, know the principles and correlate how it will appear on the plate, computer or on the film once the result comes out, vertical-horizontal learning is applied in this subject, TCVS on cardiovascular aspect can be applied on Interventional Radiology part alongside pharmacology. They have many modalities but learn the advantage, disadvantage of it.

Common denominator, use the following while listening to lecture and reading the textbook on these subject such as

1. Drawing Diagrams, Labels
2. Bullet form
3. Tables
4. Fill out missing information
5. Answer practice question, practice slides

This way you will have active learning strategy again which will make you retain more knowledge needed.