Interdisciplinary Workshop to Increase Collaboration Between Medical Students and Standardized Patient Instructors in Teaching Physical Diagnosis to Novices

INTRODUCTION: Traditionally, full-time faculty members have assumed major responsibility for teaching physical examination skills to first- and second-year medical students. Problems with faculty recruitment and adhering to a standardized way of teaching have challenged educators to seek alternatives to teaching the physical examination to novices. To address these problems, we created and implemented a novel curriculum that has standardized the teaching of physical examination skills to novice students by using standardized patient instructors (SPIs) and fourth-year medical students (MS-4s) working as an interdisciplinary team (known as a dyad). METHODS: This dyad training workshop occurs early in the school year, before first-year medical students begin their physical diagnosis course. Prior to the workshop, SPIs and MS-4s receive prereading on which they are quizzed both individually and as a preassigned dyad, during the session. The workshop requires a total of 100 minutes and includes several discussions on formative learning theory, roles, and teamwork. RESULTS: In 2013, 16 SPIs (100%) and 44 MS-4s (77%) completed a 4-question questionnaire. The majority (> 80%) of respondents selected agree or strongly agree for all four questions. DISCUSSION: While initial feedback from SPIs and MS-4s was enthusiastically positive, evidence showed the dyad could be strengthened by (1) providing time to learn the theoretical scaffolding underlying working together, (2) meeting and planning approaches to teaching efforts, and (3) enabling medical students and standardized patient instructors to apply the theoretical constructs as the foundation to reflect on their teaching roles in effectively instructing novices in physical exam skills.