Educator-to-Educator Tips & Strategies
Find out how your peers are making the most of Aquifer cases and teaching tools.
Teaching Perspectives & Pearls Blog
Virtual Peer Teaching with Aquifer
Karen McDonough, MD & Jeanne Cawse Lucas, MD
Using Integrated Illness Scripts: Framing Case-Based Learning Cases
Youngjin Cho, Ph.D., Jess Cunnick, Ph.D., Brian Wilcox, MD, Ph.D., John Szarek, Ph.D.
Blog Tag: pre-clinical learning
Blogs Archive
April 23, 2020 |
Enhancing PA Education: Integrating Aquifer Cases for Palliative and Geriatric Care
February 28, 2024 |
By: Laurel Miller, PA-C | Assistant Professor – Directo … Read more
Using Integrated Illness Scripts: Framing Case-Based Learning Cases
February 26, 2023 |
By: Youngjin Cho, Ph.D. (1), Jess Cunnick, Ph.D. (1), B … Read more
9 Ways to Teach Pre-clinical Learners with Aquifer Cases
August 18, 2022 |
Aquifer cases are a staple assignment in many clinical … Read more
7 Tools for Flipping Your Classroom with Aquifer
March 1, 2021 | Didactic Sessions
Whether you’re searching for ways to engage students in virtual learning, revamping a stale lecture, or building a new didactic session, flipping the classroom around Aquifer cases is a powerful way to engage your students and help case-based learning stick. Check out different ways that medical educators are integrating Aquifer cases into their pedagogy…
5 Ways to Use Aquifer Radiology
February 3, 2021 | Exploring Our Content
The 19 cases in Aquifer Radiology are designed to meet the needs of a wide range of learners and fit into many teaching modalities. Top radiology educators presented their successful strategies for integrating the cases in our recent webinar–find out what they shared…
5 Ways to Use Aquifer Geriatrics
January 4, 2021 | Exploring Our Content
The 27 cases in Aquifer Geriatrics are designed to meet the needs of a wide range of learners and fit into many teaching modalities. Top geriatrics educators from around the country presented their successful strategies for integrating the cases in our recent webinar–find out what they shared…
Teaching About Diagnostic Error: Tools for Creating Space in a Crowded Curriculum
December 14, 2020 | Curriculum Planning, Exploring Our Content
Diagnostic errors are a major source of morbidity and mortality in health care, and there is increasing focus on reducing diagnostic errors in medicine. Fitting these topics into your curriculum can be challenging. To help, I’d like to highlight strategies that educators have found successful using the cases and teaching tools included in Aquifer Diagnostic Excellence.
Lessons Learned from COVID: Trends & Teaching Strategies
November 30, 2020 | Successful Strategies
As the pandemic caused widespread disruption, Aquifer saw an unprecedented jump in the use of our cases–and many innovative ways to use the cases across curricula. Through our grant applications and many ongoing conversations with educators, we were able to identify trends and challenges and gather success stories and strategies to share.
Easing the Transition to Clinic: An Approach to Preparing Students
September 10, 2020 | Preparing for Clinic
This year, COVID added additional challenges to the difficult transition from pre-clinical to clinical/clerkship years by limiting student and faculty interactions during the traditional orientation week. We used Aquifer to create an online Orientation Course for our LIC students that addressed multiple key concepts and facets of the transition to the clinical/clerkship years and allowed our team to focus our limited in-person time on crucial activities.
Student Perspectives: Practical Tips for Assigning Cases
June 24, 2020 | Student Perspectives, Successful Strategies
Students provide consistently high rankings for Aquifer as reported in our five-star rating feedback data, but how and when cases are integrated into the curriculum can have a significant impact on their learning. Find out what themes emerged when we ask students what methods are most effective–and discover practical tips for assigning Aquifer cases based on student feedback.
Making Connections Throughout the Curriculum
June 10, 2020 | Curriculum Planning
We have integrated Aquifer Geriatrics cases in several different ways throughout our Geriatrics and Healthy Aging Curriculum thread. First-year students have a modified team-based learning session around the Dementia case. In the third year, cases prepare students for oral presentations on rounds…
Virtual Peer Teaching with Aquifer
May 19, 2020 | Clinical Skills
When the COVID 19 pandemic interrupted our first-year medical students’ longitudinal primary care practicum (PCP), we needed to find an alternative that addressed one of its most important goals: helping students to focus the comprehensive history, exam, and documentation that they’re taught in the clinical skills course into a primary care-appropriate presentation and SOAP note. Our thoughts turned quickly to Aquifer, which is used by our internal medicine and pediatrics clerkships. Many Aquifer cases integrate well with the basic science topics our first-year courses, but most seemed a little too advanced for a mid-first year student. At the same time, senior students were eager to find ways to help, so we decided to combine Aquifer cases with ‘virtual’ peer teaching via videoconference.
The Pre-Clinical Pace: Using Cases for Early Learners
April 30, 2020 | Integrating Basic Science
If you want to use Aquifer cases as a clinical correlate in basic sciences classes just assign one case per week (e.g. pediatric case about cystic fibrosis in a genetics course; internal medicine case about anemia in hematology course). Students at UW have told me that this is about the right number of cases because the case content is complicated for early students. Students can work independently through the case and you can use it as context for discussion about how the basic science helps explain the clinical presentation–getting to the “why” behind how patients present as they do!
