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ENGAGE TREND REPORT 09.07.09
Experiential Learning: Just What the Doctor Ordered
Two recent New York Times features highlight the importance that experiential learning plays in the medical community.
The first is a Short Video that looks at how medical interns learn how to deliver bad news through role-playing. First-year physicians practice giving diagnoses to actors with live observation with direct feedback as well as videotaping with playback and feedback. According to the report "the use of standardized patients and faculty observation of people doing actual clinical work is part of a growing movement in medical teaching." One of the greatest benefits of this type of teaching is the opportunity for instant feedback on communication skills from observing faculty members.
The second feature is an article about a program that is run by the University of New England called Learning By Living. The program offers medical students who are interested in geriatric medicine the opportunity to spend a two-week period experiencing life as a nursing home patient. Students are given a "diagnosis" of an ailment and expected to live as someone with the condition does. They keep a daily journal chronicling their experiences and, in most cases, debunking their preconceived notions about the patients and the professionals who care for them. The program goes beyond just an experiment, it also provides the student with a realistic job preview that can play a vital role in attracting the right types of people to the field of geriatric care and allow candidates to make informed decisions about their career goals.
For learning needs where a live experience is too difficult or expensive to coordinate, schools and corporations have been utilizing virtual simulated experiential learning programs. A recent Johnson & Johnson program teaches new nurses soft skills via a 3D virtual hospital environment. The nurses pilot an avatar through the halls and rooms of the hospital where they encounter characters that challenge them with real-time decision-making questions in areas such as conflict resolution, legal compliance, and agitated patients. The program allows new nurses to acquaint themselves with common issues that arise in the hospital in a risk-free environment.
The use of experiential learning for medical soft-skills training is a logical step for education. Experiential learning focuses on the learning and discovery process for the individual. For example, going to the zoo and learning through observation of and interaction with the animals allows a learner to make discoveries and experiments with knowledge firsthand, as opposed to reading about others' experiences in a book. For the adult learner especially, experience becomes a "living textbook" to which they can refer. As Aristotle once said, "For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them."
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