Educator-to-Educator Tips & Strategies
Find out how your peers are making the most of Aquifer cases and teaching tools.
Find out how your peers are making the most of Aquifer cases and teaching tools.
Touro University California Physician Assistant Program has been utilizing Aquifer cases since 2019. Originally, the cases were assigned to clinical year students to fill knowledge gaps and remediate rotations. Clinical year students found reviewing concepts in Aquifer cases during the virtual rotation block very valuable and found that cases improved in-person patient encounters.
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…
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…
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…
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.
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.
As part of my fellowship research project, I rebuilt a didactic session in our Geriatrics rotation using the flipped classroom model, an Aquifer Geriatrics case, and a range of teaching techniques to create an engaging, student-centered session.
When the pandemic hit, Harvard Medical School called upon the radiology clerkship committee to provide a virtual clerkship. With one week of preparation, we constructed the 4-week clerkship around the 19 Aquifer Radiology modules and a combination of large group lectures and small group homerooms.
Like many others, Boston University moved to a shortened virtual-only clerkship (packed with the full knowledge of our regular in-person 6-week clerkship, of course) in March of 2020. We were able to leverage Aquifer cases as a framework for preceptor discussion sessions and learning activities. The plan outlined below was for our 2-week virtual pediatrics clerkship, but I think the framework could apply to a variety of clerkships or courses transitioning to virtual group discussions.
Aquifer cases can form the basis for a huge variety of classroom sessions that can be easily adapted for virtual learning. Here are some ideas to spark your creativity if you are designing your own activity. Suggested strategies include…
Many educators are wondering how to meaningfully engage their students in distance learning activities that create community and allow them to practice important patient care skills (while not seeing patients). While I have been doing peer-to-peer consults with educators around the country about using Aquifer cases in their curriculum, I stumbled into a helpful reframe that seems to be unlocking people’s creativity: Aquifer cases (yep…more than 170 of them!) are virtual standardized patients. Wait…what?