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Teaching Perspectives & Pearls Blog

Educator-to-Educator Tips & Strategies

Find out how your peers are making the most of Aquifer cases and teaching tools.

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virtual clerkship/rotation

virtual group activities

student perspectives

virtual elective

prepare for clinic

virtual orientation

faculty development

shortened clerkship

curriculum design

pre-clinical learning

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communication skills

active learning strategies

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peer teaching

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Redesigning Didactics for Gen Z: Engaging Students Around Principles of Geriatrics

Samantha Lau, MD

Perspectives

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.

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Covering ARC-PA Standards & Supporting SCPEs with Aquifer Custom Courses

Michele Zawora, MD, FAAFP

Perspectives

We all know that every student will have a slightly different experience in each of their supervised clinical practice experiences (SCPEs). At our program, we’ve been using Aquifer cases to augment learning, build key communication skills, and supplement clinical...

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Virtual Radiology Clerkship to the Rescue

Laura L. Avery, MD

Perspectives

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...

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Student Experience: Bridging the Gap Between Coursework and Patient Care

Georgia Vasilakis, MD Candidate, Class of 2022

Perspectives

This summer I began my first clinical rotation of my third year in Family Medicine. Due to local COVID-19 precautions, the first half of our rotation was being conducted virtually. During that time, we were encouraged to complete the Aquifer...

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Easing the Transition to Clinic: An Approach to Preparing Students

Traci Marquis-Eydman, MD, FAAFP

Perspectives

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...

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Using Aquifer Cases Effectively: Perspective of a Third-Year Medical Student

Wafa Nabi, MD Candidate, Class of 2021

Perspectives

Having just completed my third year of medical school, I can confidently say that Aquifer has been highly useful for my learning. I found that its clinical relevance and stepwise learning process combined to make it a one-of-a-kind learning...

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Creating Advanced Compare and Contrast Learning with Aquifer Case Modifications

Jaime K. Bowman, MD, FAAFP

Perspectives

In our Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship, students transitioned patient-based clinical learning from real patient to Aquifer cases in late March. These more advanced level clerks required that virtual cases have increased complexity to adequately challenge them and continue building...

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Just-in-time Teaching: Connecting Didactics with Clinical Learning for Community Faculty

Joanna L. Drowos DO, MPH, MBA

Perspectives

Our community faculty are busy clinicians in local health systems or private practice. At several points throughout the clerkship, we provide calendars with the didactic and Aquifer case schedule illustrating the clinical information students will cover on campus. We...

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Providing Formative Feedback Via Summary Statements

Sherilyn Smith, MD

Perspectives

In many Aquifer cases, students are asked to write out a one to three sentence summary statement that mimics the communication skills they need on rounds, calling consults, and writing patient progress notes. Reviewing a selection of these statements...

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Filling a Gap: Creating an Elective on Tough Conversations & End of Life Care

Rose Milando & Natalia Perez

Perspectives

Medical schools have always worked hard to provide fourth-year students with clinical knowledge. But far less time is dedicated to effective, delicately nuanced conversations about diagnoses and prognoses with patients and their families. This gap isn’t new, but it’s...

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Student Perspectives: Practical Tips for Assigning Cases

Aquifer Student Engagement Group

Perspectives

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...

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Making Connections Throughout the Curriculum

Mandi Sehgal, MD

Perspectives

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...

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Returning to Real Patients: Preparing with a Virtual Rotation

Suzanne Weiner, MD

Perspectives

Like everyone else, our school needed to develop alternatives for our new fourth-year students due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With an uncertain return date for students at a range of clinical sites, we decided to build virtual, asynchronous electives...

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Virtual Peer Teaching with Aquifer

Karen McDonough, MD & Jeanne Cawse Lucas, MD

Perspectives

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...

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Adapting to a Shortened Virtual Clerkship

Rachel W. Thompson, MD

Perspectives

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...

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Hospital Systems Learning: A Virtual Case-based Framework

Michael Dell, MD

Perspectives

For those of us using virtual education time to prep students for eventual return to clinical settings, using an Aquifer case as a framework for an interactive orientation or hospital operations training session will better prepare students and interns...

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Building a Core Clinical Virtual Integrated Curriculum

Stacey Rose, MD & Nadia Ismail, MD

Pearls

Due to curriculum modifications related to the COVID-19 pandemic, our clerkship directors were charged with developing a virtual curriculum to keep students engaged in clinical learning activities while suspended from participation in face-to-face clinical care. Rather than develop a...

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Strategies for Flipping the Classroom with Aquifer

Petra J. Lewis, MD

Perspectives

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...

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The Pre-Clinical Pace: Using Cases for Early Learners

Sherilyn Smith, MD

Pearls

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)....

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A High-Value Care Course in the Era of COVID-19

Andrew S. Parsons, MD, MPH & Glenn Moulder, MD

Perspectives

It may seem unusual to design and implement a medical student course focused on high-value care in the middle of a pandemic. As third and fourth-year medical students were pulled from clinical duties at the urging of the AAMC,...

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Reframe: Aquifer Cases as Virtual Standardized Patients

Sherilyn Smith, MD

Perspectives

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...

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