Podcast Category: Clinical Skills

Episode 15: Addressing a Critical Gap: Standardizing Primary Palliative Care Education with New Cases

Guest: April Zehm, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Hematology and Oncology) at the Medical College of Wisconsin specializing in hospice and palliative medicine and Aquifer Palliative Care Leadership Team Co-Academic Lead.

Foundational skills in communication, symptom management, transitions of care, and interprofessional collaborations are critical in improving the quality of life of patients with serious illnesses–but most health professions students don’t receive standardized education in these key principles of primary palliative care. In this episode, Dr. April Zehm describes the Aquifer Palliative Care Leadership team’s creation of a national standardized curriculum and soon-to-be available online palliative care course focused on preparing students to provide high quality patient-centered care. She will also discuss how faculty can integrate course resources into their pre-clinical and clinical teaching.

Full show notes can be found here.

Teaching and Assessing SOAP Note Skills with Pre-Clinical Students

Guest: Ronda Mourad, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Cleveland, OH.

Teaching and evaluating pre-clinical students’ SOAP notes with some consistency across different clinical settings and preceptors can be challenging. In this episode Ronda Mourad, MD describes how she uses Aquifer cases to standardize the processes of both teaching and assessing this critical skill. Through using the cases Ronda is pleased to find that not only is the playing field and feedback for students more level, but it’s more robust as well, and she can widen her pool of assessors to include junior faculty and advanced students.

Full show notes can be found here.

Engaging Learners through Teleprecepting

Guest: Cynthia (Cindy) Lord, PA-C, Associate Professor and Founding Director, Case Western Reserve University Physician Assistant Program, Cleveland, OH.

When the COVID pandemic severely limited student access to clinical teaching sites and preceptors, Cindy Lord developed a teleprecepting program to simulate traditional precepting during a rotation. Aquifer cases formed the basis of learner-centered virtual small group sessions facilitated by a telepreceptor. The sessions provided a means of achieving educational equivalence across teaching sites and instructors, filling curricular gaps, enhancing student learning, and afforded opportunities for the development of mentor/mentee relationships. The teleprecepting program proved so valuable that it is now a regular part of PA education at Case Western Reserve University.

Full show notes and links to supplemental materials can be found here.