Using Standardized Medical Students to Improve Teaching

1
Using Standardized Medical Students to Improve
Teaching

• Mark H. Gelula, PhD
• Director of Faculty Development
• Research Assistant Professor
• Department of Medical Education
• University of Illinois at Chicago

2
What is a Standardized Medical Student?

• Standardized medical students are actual medical
  students or residents. They are trained using
  scripted material to behave as actors who play
  proto-typical medical students. Each prototype
  represents a teaching problem
  commonly encountered in teaching situations.

3
Literature Background

• Using a standardized medical student as a
  teacher training method for attending physicians
  (clinical teachers) is relatively new. Its use
  has been documented twice in the medical
  education literature (Lesky and Wilkerson, 1994
  Simpson, Lawrence and Krogull, 1992). However,
  neither of these papers describe the development
  of standardized medical students in a way that
  mirrors the well established design and use of
  standardized patients in medical education
  (Swanson and Stillman, 1990). Nor do the
  documented studies employ standardized medical
  students in the context of an ongoing
  institutionalized faculty development program.

4
Standardized Students at UIC

• Objective
• Standardized Medical Students have been
  developed within an institutionalized faculty
  development program to provide highly structured
  teacher training opportunities for junior
  faculty.
• Residents have been trained using this method and
  it augurs well for their teaching improvement as
  well

5
How Does It Work?

• Students are scripted. There is very little room
  for improvisation.
• Faculty are invited to "teach" a standardized
  medical student in a 10 minute, realistic
  teaching encounter.
• Teaching encounters are videotaped
• Standardized students give immediate feedback to
  the faculty person

6
Post Taping Leads to Learning

• Faculty meet in a review session where the focus
  is on learning from discussion of the experience
• Faculty observe segments of their own and each
  others encounters
• The facilitator provides a structure to the
  discussion, a focus on specific learning issues
  and offers suggestions for continued improvement

7
Assessment

• Because faculty teach different standardized
  students behaving in an identical script we are
  able to observe faculty teaching improvement over
  time

8
Faculty, Resident, and Student Attitudes

• The medical students believe this will help to
  improve teaching
• Faculty who have participated find it
• enjoyable
• interesting
• stimulating to their teaching
• Residents have found the process useful to their
  teaching improvement

9
Implications

• Standardized medical students provide a useful
  way of providing 11 and group faculty
  development for the improvement of instruction
• Relatively few faculty have participated (16 to
  date).
• Faculty should be used as proselytizers
• Resident teaching improvement may benefit as well

10
Project Funding
The Standardized Medical Student Project have
been funded through a 1997 comprehensive program
grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post
Secondary Education (FIPSE), Grant P116B70318
"Improving Clinical Teaching Skills Through
Standardized Medical Students."