Building a Pedigree: Utilization of Patient Encounters to Strengthen Genetics Foundation

Integration of basic science knowledge with clinical reasoning skills fosters long‐term retention of material. Evidence shows that active learning increases student performance outcomes in nearly every metric studied. However, resources aimed at teaching educators how to actively engage their students, especially within the medical school curriculum are largely absent. Here, we describe a team‐based learning (TBL) strategy intended to hone both patient interviewing skills and the ability to incorporate patient history and presentation into the construction of a genetic pedigree. In addition to other required courses, our first‐year medical students are enrolled in molecular medicine and primary clinical skills (PCS) courses. One week prior to the TBL event, students learned how to take a patient history and summarize key clinical factors in the PCS course. In the molecular medicine course, students learned basic inheritance patterns (dominant, recessive, mitochondrial, and sex‐linked) and completed a case‐based independent assignment designed to enhance their ability to construct patient pedigrees. Within the TBL event, students interviewed standardized patients with suspected genetic disorders in their family in real time, obtaining a thorough family history as indicated by the patient's clinical presentation. After the interview, students worked within their individual teams to construct a likely patient pedigree. Inheritance pattern, recurrence risks, and proper patient counseling were discussed as a class after evaluating one team's representative pedigree. Three days after the TBL event, students were given their normal molecular medicine exam. In addition to a >10% increase in exam performance on the genetics topics over the previous year where this strategy was absent, the students communicated an increased understanding of how to properly take a patient history and an enhanced awareness of potential genetic influences on the larger clinical picture. This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .