Bringing Back the Core Concepts of Physiology in an Advanced Medical School Senior Elective.

Abstract

Integrating physiology core concepts into the clinical years of medical education has been challenging despite efforts. This paper describes a fourth-year medical school elective, Advanced Physiology in Critical Care Medicine, that focused on integrating physiology core concepts in a case-based learning approach. The elective used interdisciplinary faculty in a virtual forum. Senior students were asked to generate mechanism of disease (MOD) maps, highlight the physiology core concepts associated with paper cases of critically ill patients, and discuss with faculty the relevance of the underlying basic science. The weekly footprint consisted of a student led session presenting MOD maps for three cases which examined aspects of core physiology concepts, and later in the same week, student presentation of order sets for the management of the cases. Students ended the 4-week elective with a mini-grand rounds presentation on a topic of their choice incorporating the core concept paradigm. Student perception data and faculty reflections of the elective course are included. Student data and faculty observations suggest they appreciate and can apply physiological core concepts to patient care. Faculty experience in the course suggests that this senior elective helped them better approach all pre-clinical teaching with the Core Concepts framework in mind.