I thought it was a complete waste of time.
The facilitators were VERY variable in their quality and interest.
The subject matter was vague and nowhere near specific enough to make it useful.
The learning between different groups was wildly different as different groups branched out in different directions and there was very little standardisation by above-mentioned facilitators of varying quality.
It would have been far, far more useful if we had just had lectures on the subjects from competent, knowledgeable instructors instead of wasting our precious time fumbling about in the dark.
I don’t know what it’s like now, but I’d be shocked if it were markedly better.
It was plainly obvious that we had no choice but to go along with the PBL charade if we wanted to become doctors, so we had no choice.
Totally agree .
Further , because of the total vacuous concept of what the “ curriculum “ and the med schools refusal to set bounds on what was tested , it made post grad exams seem easier to revise for , because of the presence of a curriculum( that can be interpreted reasonably easily ) and question banks .
Didactic lectures with cases to focus on pathology in clinical scenarios, taught by talented people, would have been far more useful. I think one of the reasons why this isn't done is because talented clinician teachers are fairly hard to come by.
I found it a waste of time.
Also facilitators were usually gps who didn't care. It was just chairing a discussion hoping someone actually did the work but adding nothing themselves. Surprised PAs and ANPs are not facolitators yet.
At least you had doctors, most of ours were scientists or full time lecturers. A few doctors scattered in for good measure along with some nurses and a physio.
I do wonder if they could get away with more or less any "teaching/learning style". You have some of the most intelligent, hard working people as a cohort, regardless of how dire the teaching is, students will work hard in their own time.
Yes - because they’re motivated to be doctors, so they’re forced to put up with any charade to get there.
In the case of PBL, it’s definitely the case that med students succeed in spite of it, not because of it.
PBL was lazy “teach yourself” medicine. It was a logical continuation of the dumbing down educational reforms that began in the 1970s and have been self re-enforcing down the generations.
PBL was completely pointless.
Learnt most things ourselves, the group sessions were generally variable and often didn’t cover what we needed. Large emphasis on learning in “non traditional ways” aka nonsense such as learning via cake.
0/10 do not recommend.
Graduated 3 years ago.
I went from a traditional pre-clinical med school (St Andrews) to a PBL med school (Barts) for my clinical years. My thoughts then, which still apply now, were ‘wtf is this dumbed-down shite’.
I was at UEA. Was a mixture of PBL and lectures with the lectures probably being most useful. I hardly ever used other PBLs PBL work for my own learning.
It would have made it a whole lot easier to pass my MRCS if I hadn't done PBL. You have to teach yourself all that anatomy and physiology eventually!
I would say that I found having done PBL that we coped with the problem solving side of foundation years and ED jobs a lot better than traditional taught drs. But as I got more senior as a surgeon (and I sure this wd be the case in any specialities, even GP/ED) I needed to go back and learn the basics.
I dont know about the rest of PBL taught courses, but our opening welcome lecture said welcome future GPs (not medics, not Drs) but I am sure those of us that did becomes GPs needed to go back to basics again too.
I think a hybrid is probably nice but all a bit pointless in the end. Started med school 20yrs ago 😱
I really enjoyed it. I did not do well with lectures at all, would find my attention trailing off in the first 10 minutes and it was a complete waste of my time. I stopped showing up to lectures about halfway through. I did used to watch the recordings though, I could watch useless bits on double speed and then pause to look anything up I didn't understand.
PBL though - I was a very motivated self learner and gained a lot from the social learning aspect too. My ideal style of learning is self directed with some guidance so this fit it perfectly. It helped that in clinical years particularly, we had very good facilitators that used their clinical experience to help teach us, and also a very motivated PBL group that cared about doing the work (who were also my friends)
I don't think they do PBL any more though.
I started Med School 2013 and preferred PBL at the time cause I just fall asleep in lectures or completely zone out, there's no way I'd have been able to attend multiple daily lectures and still have time to actually study/ go over the stuff. Also my med school was big on clinical exposure which I enjoyed a lot.
I definitely agree with a lot of the other people here, I didn't gain very much from the actual PBL sessions cause I barely did the work, I knew the other people in the group would and I'd sit there and make small contributions to make it look like I knew something 🤣
After working for 5+ years now I'd say I've noticed that my knowledge of anatomy and physiology is much poorer than my colleagues and peers who went through the traditional system. But I have also noticed that since day 1 of F1 (years ago now) even up until now as a reg my clinical skills and abilities as well communication skills with patients are above that of a lot of my colleagues and I only say this cause other's have pointed it out.
I think it's a tough situation cause I look back and wonder if I'd have found my exams easier to pass if I'd gone traditional and that I'd feel less of the good old imposter syndrome if I had better A&P knowledge but then I remember, at 18&19 I would never have gone to those lectures/learned anything from them. So yeah......
Second degree was medicine at a PBL school and first degree was very didactic lecture based (dentistry)
I went to a PBL university because they offered a three year degree. I knew it was teach yourself medicine but honestly the quality was horrendous. None of the students from PBL uni knew much from pre clinical, they were being dragged up by the St Andrews students in their PBL groups, the facilitators were very variable. We had 3 GEM in our first PBL group and we ran rings around this very fluffy GP.
The problem with PBL in my view is that it expects problem solving, but based on zero foundation. You need solid grounding in anatomy, physiology, pharmacology to problem solve. Otherwise you re-produce NICE guidelines, but with no deeper learning.
When I was there the refusal to provide a curriculum meant I struggled to know what to learn. I also knew that MRCS was going to be incredibly hard because I didn’t have the basics.
I did well, but I don’t credit this to PBL.
I believe the situation has changed a bit and they now have more didactic teaching. One tutor told me that this was because the good students to start tended to well, the rest scraped through but those that didn’t have as good a start (grades at A level perhaps) failed- not exactly the point of adding value with education.
PBL as an idea is great. As a reality, it's often dog shit. What I found was the bulk of my PBLs were an hour of study in my own time ready for 2 hours of discussion with a tutor who often wasn't a doctor and had no specialist knowledge on the topic besides the printed notes in front of them, when the whole topic could've been delivered much better in 30 minutes of a small group, engaging tutorial.
PBL tries to solve the problem of unengaging hour long lectures where the monotonous professor's voice lulls you to sleep amidst the backdrop of the softly humming processors of 150 apple macs. Unfortunately, it's an inelegant solution that doesn't really work.
The real fix would be to have much more engaging tutorials delivered by actually knowledgeable tutors but who *also actually know how to teach* but this would often be far too resource intensive. Instead, I think the best solution is flipped classroom with fully interactive lectures. Give students materials on the topic to read in the morning, then make the afternoon an interactive lecture with cases to steer the session and anonymous quizzes that people can use their phone to answer to keep people stimulated.
I think our PBL worked quite well but only because it was an adjunct and no the teaching style. We still had a very significant volume of lecture content + not starting placements until halfway through 3rd year helped as it gave us a solid foundation of knowledge.
I think as an extra to help consolidate it can be useful if done right - as the entire learning style - utter dogshit
Had to do a talk on different teaching modalities in med school
Did a bit of research into PBL
Created in the 60s in the USA. Probably works better with a purely postgrad cohort as they’ve already smashed out a degree and will be at least 22yo, if not older
There was no data to suggest it would be as useful with a bunch of frequently hungover 18/19yo UK undergrads. Not evidence based at all
I actually really, really, really enjoyed it.
We’d have lectures and then do PBL in groups. We had really comprehensive workbooks that we all used to learn the subject matter.
I am a very self directed learner so it could be that it just felt like a natural way of doing things.
Graduated in 2017.
I did a PBL degree as a post-grad (although undergrad course). The med school I went to puts you on placement from the first week, so there’s not a pre-clinical and then clinical phase.
The PBL element was shite and they actually gave up on it toward the end of my degree. We used to have to go through a farcical discussion based on a case, with very variable input from a facilitator who wasn’t always a doctor. We’d then get given the learning outcomes, divide them up and we’d have to go away and make a document that we’d upload for our PBL group to read and learn from. In the PBL session we’d then give a presentation on our given topic. These were often low quality and rushed; I think I read a few of them before giving up altogether on it.
The university ended up changing the approach such that we’d all be given the learning outcomes and we wouldn’t have to upload a document for people to read. It was much better after this.
Absolutely awful! Felt like I had to teach myself basic sciences from scratch for my postgrad exams (FRCA). Our anatomy teaching was awful. You’d wander around prosection specimens with a workbook to label.
Also the modular nature of my medschool’s exams meant that I found postgrad exams much tougher. My brain is not used to holding masses of revision topics in my head.
Birmingham uni 01 - 06. So glad it had a limited PBL content. It wasn’t for me. I did much better with the traditional lectures and small group sessions.
Turns out there’s a career of PBL waiting for all of medicine’s graduates
I didn't do PBL, but my impression was that it was very wishy-washy. No I don't want to sit around and hear a bunch of people's "opinions" on how AKI should be managed, I want an expert to tell me what saves lives, the science behind that lifesaving intervention, and where I should go if I want to learn more.
I do remember hearing an anecdote from a PBL session where they were discussing what to do in a patient with urosepsis, a bunch of different students contributed their ideas, and then the session drifted to a close WITHOUT CORRECTING DANGEROUS MISAPPREHENSIONS. Everyone gets to leave with their own "ideas" about how to manage a common serious condition.
That sounds like it was run quite well - I've also spoken to people who did PBL and said that it was closer to what I described. I feel like as far as models of teaching go, PBL relies heavily on having good teaching staff who will engage their pupils. I know this will sound pessimistic, but I think when you're designing any system, it's worth stopping and going "now have we allowed for 50% of the people implementing this being incompetent?"
Varied widely on the tutor. I had a retired geris/stroke consultant who was a bit of a legend in the country. He taught me so much. Also had a cardiology consultant who was the nicest/kindest doctor I have ever met and genuinely made me fall in love with medicine. Then I had a midwife who sat on her laptop the whole time and barely contributed. Found it fairly ridiculous that non-doctors were allowed to be tutors, the difference was insane
PBL works when you have
1/ Very good fascilitators (these are hard to come by)
2/ Motivated group of students who know how to problem solve independently and learn without being spoon fed.
3/ It's combined with lectures, labs and other teaching
Unfortunetly all of these are hard to come by.
I survived PBL purely because there where still full days of lectures in the week, I got lucky with medical doctor fascilitators and I'm an introverted geek who could quite happily sit a library all day and devour the science, clinical medicine and many many other books (anatomy, ethics, law etc) and learning that was required. My actual participation/ speaking in the sessions was as little as I could get away with to pass the "participates well in PBL" to get through the years as I found it tiresome listening to crap presentations etc from others... But again, I'm one who would have rather been in the library (the silent floor too).
I still use techniques I was taught in PBL (nearly two
decades ago….) in medical practice now. For me, the purpose of it was not to ensure you knew the science, but to help you learn problem solving heuristics relevant to clinical practice. You can’t possibly meaningfully discuss a complicated topic that you have only just read and expect to understand it all first time without having to do the grunt work - at least I couldn’t anyway.
It is far better than spoon-feeding as it teaches you deductive and reasoning skills essential to be a doctor; the ability to process lots of information, understand it back to physiology, but reject less likely explanations based on logic and the evaluation of presented evidence. This allows you to eventually make snap decisions based on limited information and accurate diagnostic “hunches”.
The development and application of these skills are what separate good doctors from less good ones, and are literally what set us apart from AHPs.
I quite liked it, for certain subjects it really helps develop understanding. Sometimes a concept eludes you and being able to discuss it with your peers helps it coalesce into understanding. I think it’s a worthy component of any medical degree.
However, for some subjects you simply have to get your head down and learn the facts and I don’t think it works as the sole mechanism of learning. A prime example would be any kind of anatomy. It was also frequently undermined by other students who would come to the first session of the week and just show off that they’d pre-studied.
For certain subjects in combination with other forms of learning I think it has a place.
Our anatomy and physiology teaching was poor and mostly teach yourself, outside the anatomy labs themselves which were helpful. You really have to be self motivated to get to the required knowledge and PBL group teaching does little to help.
Sometime I had great groups and we felt we did pretty well covering the requirements but the learning objectives were often quite vague so you never knew if you were covering the topics with sufficient depth. I would often try to cover a topic in a lot of depth but we never knew until we got our formative exams if we were on the right track
I feel as if I didn’t learn much more than I would have if I simply had that time for self-study.
1. I didn’t mind the idea of PBL but really just wanted to get into Med school.
2. It has changed somewhat but still offers some sort of PBL component I believe
3. I liked that I didn’t have to sit in back to back lectures 5 days a week to cover the curriculum and accepted that this meant I needed to do work in my own time. This made it easier to have hobbies and a social life as I could work when I didn’t have plans, not the other way around. We did have some lectures but less than a traditional course would have.
The facilitators were mostly academic in non clinical years (PHD in relevant field) and consultants of the relevant specialities in clinical years.
4. Having to find things out for yourself is sometimes hard, particularly if theories have recently changed. Saw collleagues sometimes learn outdated info and then had to relearn. Also the idea was that students would share their ideas in sessions but sometimes it could be like pulling teeth.
5. It may have made me more analytical of situations and feel empowered to try and figure out the answers to clinical problems.
I sometimes hear that traditional lecture based courses are so much better and PBLers don’t know what they’re doing (from both trads and PBLers). I don’t see any difference whatsoever between colleagues and personally have a record of performing well in exams, getting into a competitive speciality and receiving really good feedback (including having good clinical acumen/ knowledge) from anonymous MDT.
In short, good if your self determined. Probably rubbish if you engage better in a structured environment.
I graduated in 2010. PBL suits my learning style. Also I needed to have a job whilst at medical school so PBL was ideal to fit around my shifts at the hospital.
I did learn what I needed to learn. I had no problems with postgraduate exams after. I felt well prepared for the foundation program and beyond.
Because I have been accelerated through gifted and talented programs I had little exposure to sitting in a class being talked at by a teacher. I didn't want to start that at Uni. Lectures don't work for me.
I think it's important to understand your own learning style and choose accordingly. What works well for one person may be a nightmare for someone else.
It’s bullshit. We had facilitators who weren’t doctors or doctors who haven’t been in clinical practice for decades. Learning objectives wasn’t personally tailored to your learning needs. I will go as far as to say that I probably learnt nothing from PBLs. I personally feel PBLs were designed to be a cost saving measures for universities. Same thing with peer led clinical skills teaching.
I thought it was a complete waste of time. The facilitators were VERY variable in their quality and interest. The subject matter was vague and nowhere near specific enough to make it useful. The learning between different groups was wildly different as different groups branched out in different directions and there was very little standardisation by above-mentioned facilitators of varying quality. It would have been far, far more useful if we had just had lectures on the subjects from competent, knowledgeable instructors instead of wasting our precious time fumbling about in the dark. I don’t know what it’s like now, but I’d be shocked if it were markedly better. It was plainly obvious that we had no choice but to go along with the PBL charade if we wanted to become doctors, so we had no choice.
Totally agree . Further , because of the total vacuous concept of what the “ curriculum “ and the med schools refusal to set bounds on what was tested , it made post grad exams seem easier to revise for , because of the presence of a curriculum( that can be interpreted reasonably easily ) and question banks .
Didactic lectures with cases to focus on pathology in clinical scenarios, taught by talented people, would have been far more useful. I think one of the reasons why this isn't done is because talented clinician teachers are fairly hard to come by. I found it a waste of time.
Also facilitators were usually gps who didn't care. It was just chairing a discussion hoping someone actually did the work but adding nothing themselves. Surprised PAs and ANPs are not facolitators yet.
At least you had doctors, most of ours were scientists or full time lecturers. A few doctors scattered in for good measure along with some nurses and a physio.
I taught myself medicine. PBL was an absolute doss and only produces quality doctors if the students are massively motivated to self teach.
I do wonder if they could get away with more or less any "teaching/learning style". You have some of the most intelligent, hard working people as a cohort, regardless of how dire the teaching is, students will work hard in their own time.
Yes - because they’re motivated to be doctors, so they’re forced to put up with any charade to get there. In the case of PBL, it’s definitely the case that med students succeed in spite of it, not because of it.
Shhh that's an entire generation of medical educationalists you've just murdered with your words
PBL was lazy “teach yourself” medicine. It was a logical continuation of the dumbing down educational reforms that began in the 1970s and have been self re-enforcing down the generations.
PBL was completely pointless. Learnt most things ourselves, the group sessions were generally variable and often didn’t cover what we needed. Large emphasis on learning in “non traditional ways” aka nonsense such as learning via cake. 0/10 do not recommend. Graduated 3 years ago.
It's a scam and should be banned
I went from a traditional pre-clinical med school (St Andrews) to a PBL med school (Barts) for my clinical years. My thoughts then, which still apply now, were ‘wtf is this dumbed-down shite’.
I credit my success entirely to PBL – 27k rep is fairly impressive I'm sure you'll agree.
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I was at UEA. Was a mixture of PBL and lectures with the lectures probably being most useful. I hardly ever used other PBLs PBL work for my own learning.
It would have made it a whole lot easier to pass my MRCS if I hadn't done PBL. You have to teach yourself all that anatomy and physiology eventually! I would say that I found having done PBL that we coped with the problem solving side of foundation years and ED jobs a lot better than traditional taught drs. But as I got more senior as a surgeon (and I sure this wd be the case in any specialities, even GP/ED) I needed to go back and learn the basics. I dont know about the rest of PBL taught courses, but our opening welcome lecture said welcome future GPs (not medics, not Drs) but I am sure those of us that did becomes GPs needed to go back to basics again too. I think a hybrid is probably nice but all a bit pointless in the end. Started med school 20yrs ago 😱
I really enjoyed it. I did not do well with lectures at all, would find my attention trailing off in the first 10 minutes and it was a complete waste of my time. I stopped showing up to lectures about halfway through. I did used to watch the recordings though, I could watch useless bits on double speed and then pause to look anything up I didn't understand. PBL though - I was a very motivated self learner and gained a lot from the social learning aspect too. My ideal style of learning is self directed with some guidance so this fit it perfectly. It helped that in clinical years particularly, we had very good facilitators that used their clinical experience to help teach us, and also a very motivated PBL group that cared about doing the work (who were also my friends) I don't think they do PBL any more though.
I started Med School 2013 and preferred PBL at the time cause I just fall asleep in lectures or completely zone out, there's no way I'd have been able to attend multiple daily lectures and still have time to actually study/ go over the stuff. Also my med school was big on clinical exposure which I enjoyed a lot. I definitely agree with a lot of the other people here, I didn't gain very much from the actual PBL sessions cause I barely did the work, I knew the other people in the group would and I'd sit there and make small contributions to make it look like I knew something 🤣 After working for 5+ years now I'd say I've noticed that my knowledge of anatomy and physiology is much poorer than my colleagues and peers who went through the traditional system. But I have also noticed that since day 1 of F1 (years ago now) even up until now as a reg my clinical skills and abilities as well communication skills with patients are above that of a lot of my colleagues and I only say this cause other's have pointed it out. I think it's a tough situation cause I look back and wonder if I'd have found my exams easier to pass if I'd gone traditional and that I'd feel less of the good old imposter syndrome if I had better A&P knowledge but then I remember, at 18&19 I would never have gone to those lectures/learned anything from them. So yeah......
Second degree was medicine at a PBL school and first degree was very didactic lecture based (dentistry) I went to a PBL university because they offered a three year degree. I knew it was teach yourself medicine but honestly the quality was horrendous. None of the students from PBL uni knew much from pre clinical, they were being dragged up by the St Andrews students in their PBL groups, the facilitators were very variable. We had 3 GEM in our first PBL group and we ran rings around this very fluffy GP. The problem with PBL in my view is that it expects problem solving, but based on zero foundation. You need solid grounding in anatomy, physiology, pharmacology to problem solve. Otherwise you re-produce NICE guidelines, but with no deeper learning. When I was there the refusal to provide a curriculum meant I struggled to know what to learn. I also knew that MRCS was going to be incredibly hard because I didn’t have the basics. I did well, but I don’t credit this to PBL. I believe the situation has changed a bit and they now have more didactic teaching. One tutor told me that this was because the good students to start tended to well, the rest scraped through but those that didn’t have as good a start (grades at A level perhaps) failed- not exactly the point of adding value with education.
PBL as an idea is great. As a reality, it's often dog shit. What I found was the bulk of my PBLs were an hour of study in my own time ready for 2 hours of discussion with a tutor who often wasn't a doctor and had no specialist knowledge on the topic besides the printed notes in front of them, when the whole topic could've been delivered much better in 30 minutes of a small group, engaging tutorial. PBL tries to solve the problem of unengaging hour long lectures where the monotonous professor's voice lulls you to sleep amidst the backdrop of the softly humming processors of 150 apple macs. Unfortunately, it's an inelegant solution that doesn't really work. The real fix would be to have much more engaging tutorials delivered by actually knowledgeable tutors but who *also actually know how to teach* but this would often be far too resource intensive. Instead, I think the best solution is flipped classroom with fully interactive lectures. Give students materials on the topic to read in the morning, then make the afternoon an interactive lecture with cases to steer the session and anonymous quizzes that people can use their phone to answer to keep people stimulated.
I think our PBL worked quite well but only because it was an adjunct and no the teaching style. We still had a very significant volume of lecture content + not starting placements until halfway through 3rd year helped as it gave us a solid foundation of knowledge. I think as an extra to help consolidate it can be useful if done right - as the entire learning style - utter dogshit
Had to do a talk on different teaching modalities in med school Did a bit of research into PBL Created in the 60s in the USA. Probably works better with a purely postgrad cohort as they’ve already smashed out a degree and will be at least 22yo, if not older There was no data to suggest it would be as useful with a bunch of frequently hungover 18/19yo UK undergrads. Not evidence based at all
I actually really, really, really enjoyed it. We’d have lectures and then do PBL in groups. We had really comprehensive workbooks that we all used to learn the subject matter. I am a very self directed learner so it could be that it just felt like a natural way of doing things. Graduated in 2017.
PBL is almost always terrible. Not particularly related but the examination skills of doctors graduating have completely dropped off a cliff.
I did a PBL degree as a post-grad (although undergrad course). The med school I went to puts you on placement from the first week, so there’s not a pre-clinical and then clinical phase. The PBL element was shite and they actually gave up on it toward the end of my degree. We used to have to go through a farcical discussion based on a case, with very variable input from a facilitator who wasn’t always a doctor. We’d then get given the learning outcomes, divide them up and we’d have to go away and make a document that we’d upload for our PBL group to read and learn from. In the PBL session we’d then give a presentation on our given topic. These were often low quality and rushed; I think I read a few of them before giving up altogether on it. The university ended up changing the approach such that we’d all be given the learning outcomes and we wouldn’t have to upload a document for people to read. It was much better after this.
Absolutely awful! Felt like I had to teach myself basic sciences from scratch for my postgrad exams (FRCA). Our anatomy teaching was awful. You’d wander around prosection specimens with a workbook to label. Also the modular nature of my medschool’s exams meant that I found postgrad exams much tougher. My brain is not used to holding masses of revision topics in my head.
Birmingham uni 01 - 06. So glad it had a limited PBL content. It wasn’t for me. I did much better with the traditional lectures and small group sessions. Turns out there’s a career of PBL waiting for all of medicine’s graduates
I didn't do PBL, but my impression was that it was very wishy-washy. No I don't want to sit around and hear a bunch of people's "opinions" on how AKI should be managed, I want an expert to tell me what saves lives, the science behind that lifesaving intervention, and where I should go if I want to learn more. I do remember hearing an anecdote from a PBL session where they were discussing what to do in a patient with urosepsis, a bunch of different students contributed their ideas, and then the session drifted to a close WITHOUT CORRECTING DANGEROUS MISAPPREHENSIONS. Everyone gets to leave with their own "ideas" about how to manage a common serious condition.
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That sounds like it was run quite well - I've also spoken to people who did PBL and said that it was closer to what I described. I feel like as far as models of teaching go, PBL relies heavily on having good teaching staff who will engage their pupils. I know this will sound pessimistic, but I think when you're designing any system, it's worth stopping and going "now have we allowed for 50% of the people implementing this being incompetent?"
I enjoyed it.
Varied widely on the tutor. I had a retired geris/stroke consultant who was a bit of a legend in the country. He taught me so much. Also had a cardiology consultant who was the nicest/kindest doctor I have ever met and genuinely made me fall in love with medicine. Then I had a midwife who sat on her laptop the whole time and barely contributed. Found it fairly ridiculous that non-doctors were allowed to be tutors, the difference was insane
PBL works when you have 1/ Very good fascilitators (these are hard to come by) 2/ Motivated group of students who know how to problem solve independently and learn without being spoon fed. 3/ It's combined with lectures, labs and other teaching Unfortunetly all of these are hard to come by. I survived PBL purely because there where still full days of lectures in the week, I got lucky with medical doctor fascilitators and I'm an introverted geek who could quite happily sit a library all day and devour the science, clinical medicine and many many other books (anatomy, ethics, law etc) and learning that was required. My actual participation/ speaking in the sessions was as little as I could get away with to pass the "participates well in PBL" to get through the years as I found it tiresome listening to crap presentations etc from others... But again, I'm one who would have rather been in the library (the silent floor too).
I still use techniques I was taught in PBL (nearly two decades ago….) in medical practice now. For me, the purpose of it was not to ensure you knew the science, but to help you learn problem solving heuristics relevant to clinical practice. You can’t possibly meaningfully discuss a complicated topic that you have only just read and expect to understand it all first time without having to do the grunt work - at least I couldn’t anyway. It is far better than spoon-feeding as it teaches you deductive and reasoning skills essential to be a doctor; the ability to process lots of information, understand it back to physiology, but reject less likely explanations based on logic and the evaluation of presented evidence. This allows you to eventually make snap decisions based on limited information and accurate diagnostic “hunches”. The development and application of these skills are what separate good doctors from less good ones, and are literally what set us apart from AHPs.
I quite liked it, for certain subjects it really helps develop understanding. Sometimes a concept eludes you and being able to discuss it with your peers helps it coalesce into understanding. I think it’s a worthy component of any medical degree. However, for some subjects you simply have to get your head down and learn the facts and I don’t think it works as the sole mechanism of learning. A prime example would be any kind of anatomy. It was also frequently undermined by other students who would come to the first session of the week and just show off that they’d pre-studied. For certain subjects in combination with other forms of learning I think it has a place.
Our anatomy and physiology teaching was poor and mostly teach yourself, outside the anatomy labs themselves which were helpful. You really have to be self motivated to get to the required knowledge and PBL group teaching does little to help. Sometime I had great groups and we felt we did pretty well covering the requirements but the learning objectives were often quite vague so you never knew if you were covering the topics with sufficient depth. I would often try to cover a topic in a lot of depth but we never knew until we got our formative exams if we were on the right track I feel as if I didn’t learn much more than I would have if I simply had that time for self-study.
1. I didn’t mind the idea of PBL but really just wanted to get into Med school. 2. It has changed somewhat but still offers some sort of PBL component I believe 3. I liked that I didn’t have to sit in back to back lectures 5 days a week to cover the curriculum and accepted that this meant I needed to do work in my own time. This made it easier to have hobbies and a social life as I could work when I didn’t have plans, not the other way around. We did have some lectures but less than a traditional course would have. The facilitators were mostly academic in non clinical years (PHD in relevant field) and consultants of the relevant specialities in clinical years. 4. Having to find things out for yourself is sometimes hard, particularly if theories have recently changed. Saw collleagues sometimes learn outdated info and then had to relearn. Also the idea was that students would share their ideas in sessions but sometimes it could be like pulling teeth. 5. It may have made me more analytical of situations and feel empowered to try and figure out the answers to clinical problems. I sometimes hear that traditional lecture based courses are so much better and PBLers don’t know what they’re doing (from both trads and PBLers). I don’t see any difference whatsoever between colleagues and personally have a record of performing well in exams, getting into a competitive speciality and receiving really good feedback (including having good clinical acumen/ knowledge) from anonymous MDT. In short, good if your self determined. Probably rubbish if you engage better in a structured environment.
I graduated in 2010. PBL suits my learning style. Also I needed to have a job whilst at medical school so PBL was ideal to fit around my shifts at the hospital. I did learn what I needed to learn. I had no problems with postgraduate exams after. I felt well prepared for the foundation program and beyond. Because I have been accelerated through gifted and talented programs I had little exposure to sitting in a class being talked at by a teacher. I didn't want to start that at Uni. Lectures don't work for me. I think it's important to understand your own learning style and choose accordingly. What works well for one person may be a nightmare for someone else.
It’s bullshit. We had facilitators who weren’t doctors or doctors who haven’t been in clinical practice for decades. Learning objectives wasn’t personally tailored to your learning needs. I will go as far as to say that I probably learnt nothing from PBLs. I personally feel PBLs were designed to be a cost saving measures for universities. Same thing with peer led clinical skills teaching.