I give students scenarios to enhance their critical thinking in classroom or in clinicals.
I like that you are asking them to find instruments that are categorized by use.
Lise, this is a marvelous activity and I appreciate you sharing it with us.
One thing that I do is place a number of instruments in a mayo stand cover, I teach Surgical Technology, and then the student reaches in and pulls out an instrument and they have 5 seconds to name the instrument. If they do, they receive a roll of Smarties candy and the instrument is removed from the cover(it looks like a big blue pillowcase). If the student does not know the name I give out a dum-dum sucker and it goes back in the mayo stand cover and I move on to the next student. It doesn't take long for all the students to get the Smarties!
I do the same kind of idea, although I will take index cards and depending on how many students are in the class and how many instruments, I will write three to five different instruments and then they have to go up and find them. We will do this for a few times and then I will ask a student to go up to the table and pick up three cutting and dissecting or grasping and holding instruments. If they are one of the last ones to go and there are not enough of that type of instrument on the table or if someone has picked up an incorrect instrument the students can go around to the other students and take which instrument they think is the correct one. The students then go through and they receive points they can use for quizzes or tests.
Kimberly, thank you for sharing such a wonderful teaching idea! We can all benefit from this idea.
I call it "Do you see what I see?". As many people tell you what symptoms they currently have and that is great feed back. But too often people take their time in getting help (Dr. PT ...) allowing for dysfunctional compensation patterns to develop. In my profession if we can't get to the source of the problem which is usually hidden in these compensation patterns we are essentially puting a bandaid over the issue. By teaching students to not only gain valuable information through what they hear, seeing the story that the body offers is priceless. So in this game you look at a person anteriorly, rt. lateral, posteriorly, and lt. lateral from head to toe evaluating muscle inbalances. From what they see I may ask review question of muscles or what plan they have to relieve the imbalances. Overall this activity takes their clinical applications to a whole new level as they actually see information from books in real practice (technique application, physiological effects.......) I love that they learn in the activity instead of trying to memorize everything. It goes along way for the student preparing for state boards.
Carol, I hope you try the non-verbal gestures with your students. It makes them aware that non-verbal communication between and among staff is an important part of being a team on the job.
Joel, seeing the value of marrying a fun activity to a learning experience makes you a great instructor!
I have practiced clinical skills and on-the job setting with my students by having one student be the medical professional and the other student act as the "patient". I have encouraged the "patient" student to "put on a good act" for the other student, posing as a difficult patient, sad patient , confused patient, etc. This has allowed the students to be prepared for situations that arise in the clinical or on-the-job-setting and feel confident ahead of time that they may "handle the situation" properly because they have already "experienced" it.
I like the idea of using specific gestures and signs for students to ask for help or give the instructor they need help. Staff surprises has always been used in our post conferences at clinical Students usually see a lot of things that need to be discussed as to what is protocol or changes in a procedure that is safe or not safe. Is this part of their job description, is it a protocol that goes along with their scope of practice. I love doing the debriefing of their experiences with the nursing staff on the floor.
Playing anytype of game a trivial pursuit, hangman approach is both fun and educational
Event cards provide the student with a starting
point to demonstrate their knowledge about the topic. It is a proper tool in the real world
setting.
playing jepordy helps students remember and they seem to enjoy playing
event cards can create new enthuseasim for the subject .
Catherine, you are fortunate to have the ability to take students into clinical areas for application of skills taught and real world job scenarios. This allows you to truly assess the students ability to think on their feet and make appropriate decisions.
I appreciate the individual teaching strategies that have been mentioned in this module that reinforce and facilitate the completion and practicing of skills.
As others have mentioned, the strategies that my instructors and I use in the clinical areas are first the presentation of the skill by demonstration which is done by the instructor or driven by a visual using DVD, Youtube etc. This is followed by practice, practice, practice and then being able to review case studies to demonstrate the critical thinking portion. The patient event cards are definitly something that we could use if the students have any down time during externship/clinical.
Marivic, it is great that you use similar activities to the ones I have. Similar teaching experiences with other instructors validates our best practices and allows us to grow.
Staff surprises are a routine part of our clinical day included in post-conference. It gets students to think about morals and ethical issues when they observe questionable practices and shortcuts.
I also regularly ask students random critical thinking questions related to their assigned patient in order to reinforce the importance of understanding WHY things are done instead of just mindlessly doing things. Students respond well to the spontaneity of such questions because they say it keeps them on their toes. I guess this would be the equivalent of using event cards.
Leslie, I like this adaptation of event cards for pharmacology.
