“Most physicians today readily acknowledge that the biomedical information available exceeds what one person can learn and retain. Questions remain, however, regarding how much content students must learn, whether that learning is best done in traditional classroom settings, and what else is required for medical trainees to become successful lifelong learners and adaptable practitioners. The ubiquitous presence of personal and institutional technology permits rapid access to medical information and enables educators to focus on helping students develop a deeper understanding of human health and disease, problem-solving skills, and the ability to transfer knowledge learned in one context to another situation. Educators giving a traditional lecture with dozens of content-heavy PowerPoint slides may confuse what they teach with what students learn: the fact that a teacher has presented a piece of information does not mean that students have learned it. In fact, cognitive-load theory suggests that our brains are limited in the amount of information they can process at a time3; 60 slides in 45 minutes may seem like an efficient way to teach, but it is unlikely to be an effective way to learn.
Students learning new material may be deceived by the illusion of knowing and the fallacy of understanding. When students hear or read material that is fluent and well presented, it is common for them to believe they have now mastered the content. When confronted with a problem that requires application of that information, however, they may realize that their understanding is superficial at best.
To promote more thorough understanding and enhance problem-solving skills and self-directed learning — critical skills for a doctor who will be practicing for 30 to 50 years and, in the case of self-directed learning exercises, a new requirement for accreditation established by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education — medical schools have begun emphasizing active learning and team-based activities. Acquisition of information occurs largely outside the classroom: in accordance with principles derived from cognitive science, factual content is presented in study assignments that aren’t overwhelmingly long, and the content is interspersed with questions or problems to ensure that students can assess their level of understanding.”
The foregoing excerpt from an article by Richard M. Schwartzstein, M.D., and David H. Roberts, M.D., “Saying Goodbye to Lectures in Medical School — Paradigm Shift or Passing Fad?” in the August 17, 2017, edition of The New England Journal of Medicine” (http://bit.ly/2vbpfDf) highlights both the extreme cognitive challenges of medical education and practice, and the current phenomenon elaborated on in the remainder of the article that “medical schools have begun emphasizing active learning including team-based activities.” Using an information technology (IT) solution compliant with the Cloud Healthcare Appliance Real-Time Solution as a Service (CHARTSaaS) Reference Architecture (RA), medical students and their healthcare provider subject matter expert (SME) can create mobile IT applications or “apps” with little or no IT expert assistance to provide real-time cognitive support for learning and in practice.
Creation of such apps will contribute to the recommended team-based active learning, and with appropriate medical faculty SME review and comment can be used and optimized during internship and residency. CHARTSaaS-built apps operate as systems of engagement with professional providers and their patients to leverage the on-premise legacy systems of record referred to as electronic health record (EHR) or hospital information systems (HIS) using secure intelligent interoperability. Furthermore, they can automate such problematic and error-prone use cases as differential diagnosis and treatment planning, and alarm/alert fatigue mitigation. Since such apps are easily modifiable, they can facilitate compliance with the accreditation standards of The Joint Commission that govern continuous process improvement.
Please validate these CHARTSaaS RA-related propositions to your own satisfaction by reading the white paper at http://bit.ly/2vmK1Rx, viewing the tutorials posted on YouTube (http://bit.ly/2sVajvS and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5OtbCCDNLs) and also by reviewing the details of CHARTSaaS™ and the CHARTSaaS RA™ in these presentations:
https://mix.office.com/embed/19g5mpp3f6qkx
https://mix.office.com/embed/1bp3nuiwdjk86
https://mix.office.com/watch/o2y82frum3lt
Healthcare providers will benefit significantly from appreciating and then applying a CHARTSaaS RA-compliant IT solution. To do so will mitigate medical mistakes (currently the third leading cause of patient deaths. per Makaray and Daniel (http://bit.ly/1rtW6Sa); thereby minimizing patient adverse events and optimizing clinical case outcomes while maximizing the cost-effectiveness of care and treatment, and also accelerating the accrual and facilitating the application of medical knowledge.