Practical points for brain-friendly medical and health sciences teaching

BACKGROUND: Special learning outcomes are considered for medical and health sciences education which can be acquired by some interactive learning systems in the human brain. Given the importance of this issue, based on literature, we attempted at mentioning certain practical points for medical and health sciences educators to employ in preclinical and clinical teaching. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We searched databases of PubMed, Proquest, Scopus, ERIC, and ISI Web of Science for relevant literature from January 2010 to January 2019. RESULTS: From a total of 1029 records, 30 articles along with 35 papers from snowballing and hand searching were included in this study. The following 12 main items were encompassed: teaching students the basic neuroscience of learning and set individual learning goals, “just right challenge” heeding the balance between supervision and autonomy, brain-friendly coaching, repetition with spaced learning, visualization as a powerful learning tool, multimodal teaching, cognitive learning and mental model, cognitive-emotional learning, active and social learning, creativity and art, sleep, medical faculty's participation regarding the courses of “neuro-education studies,” and “neuro-myths” were suggested for brain-friendly medical and health sciences teaching. CONCLUSIONS: We considered 12 practical points for brain-aware medical and health sciences teaching according to the recent literature on the basis of the association between education, cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology. Interdisciplinary research and practice regarding this issue can improve teaching–learning quality, students’ well-being, and ultimately patient outcomes.