Image by hanspoldoja via Flickr

There are many people who wish to pursue a career in medicine but find that they first must make it through a rigorous medical school course. These courses help to instruct those in the medical field while simultaneously weeding out those who cannot stand the pace and demands of the medical profession.

The styles of teaching vary from teacher to teacher and subject to subject. These different styles are a great advantage to those seeking healthcare careers, as students will be exposed to different ways of thinking and arriving at medical answers.

Currently, the most effective and popular methods of medical teaching include lectures, problem-based learning (PBL), tutorials, seminars, and one-on-one teaching scenarios.  Each one has strengths and weaknesses in helping to educate the student.

Lectures tend to be highly efficient, but miss much in terms of active learning and providing effective student feedback. Seminar teaching provides more opportunities for active learning situations and allows for more feedback than simply lecturing, but this method often shows a drop in overall efficiency in the learning model.

PBL provides the most active learning and student feedback, but this kind of interaction diminishes overall efficiency. Tutorials are similar in that efficiency isn’t very high, but active learning is better and feedback is high.

One-on-one teaching is the lowest in efficiency but the highest in both active learning and student feedback.

Each method has strengths that students are going to gain from, and though there is no perfect model, when they are combined they provide an excellent learning structure.