Today I had two wonderful experiences with
the PAHS medical students. I spent an
hour in the Problem Based Learning Tutorial room (a small group, tutor-faciliatated discussion about a fictional medical case), where along with their wonderful tutor,
Moyuri-Maam, the students
enthusiastically debated the potential diagnosis of their “patient”. In this case the woman described in the case had heart palpitations
and periods of lightheadedness. Students
had to interpret an electrocardiogram, the first they have seen in their
training thus far.. Discussion was
lively, opinions offered, alternatives countered, and all done professionally
and respectfully. With an excellent
group such as this one, the tutor has very little to do besides gently guide
the discussion along if it stalls or the students are in need of further
information. These Nepali students take
ownership of their learning, deciding what they need to know and at what
pace. One of their “ground rules”
–written up on the board as a constant reminder- was that no one gets left
behind in the discussion. Did I mention that this entire discussion is carried on in their second language (English)?
Following the PBL tutorial the students
moved into the Physiology Practical Room where their professor Jayandra-Sir
walked them step by step through how to record and interpret an
electrocardiogram.
When I run this lab in Vancouver we have 15 reasonably new fully automatic portable ECG machines (2-3 students to a machine) and everyone gets to record and interpret their own ECG. Here at PAHS there is one (old, but functional) ECG machine between 30 students. For that reason, only one student has his ECG measured, and the rest of the students use that ECG in order to learn how to interpret the waveforms. The lack of equipment notwithstanding, the students eagerly attended to all the to the steps of recording and interpretation and by the end of two hours were comfortably navigating the electrical nuances of the heart’s electrical signature.
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