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COURSE OVERVIEW
The purpose of this course is to provide a comprehensive, self-instructional, self-paced national board examination preparation and review course for physician assistants. It may also be very useful to first year physician assistant students as they begin to build their foundation of medical knowledge and to others who wish to expand their existing medical information data base. The course requires the completion of fill-in-the-blank forms, short answer quizzes and a series of multiple choice examinations all via an interactive internet web site.
GENERAL COURSE DESCRIPTION
The foundation for this course involves 1) a specially designed, outline type, fill-in-the-blank form used to organize and summarize study notes on a minimum of 100 common diseases and disorders; 2) a unique method of study and self assessment that is designed to improve recall of an increased amount of medical data; 3) a series of ten different examinations, each composed of 100 multiple choice type questions on those common diseases and disorders.
METHODOLOGY
In this course, the medical information is to be summarized and condensed into the format of detailed, one page outlines on at least 100 of the most common diseases encountered in the general practice settings within the United States. These one page summaries are referred to as "Expanded Subjective Objective Assessment & Plan, SOAP notes." The diseases are grouped together based upon the primary system that they affect. Each disease is to be summarized in an outline format utilizing only one or two important key words or short phrases that describe the significant subjective and objective data, the differential diagnostic considerations and the appropriate management plan. Additional space is provided on the form for information regarding epidemiology, etiology, predisposing factors, expected treatment outcomes, possible complications and other helpful bits of information.
The course requires that blank copies of the "expanded SOAP note" forms to be completed over the internet. The data used for the completion of the "expanded SOAP notes" may be obtained for your medical textbooks or lecture notes on each disease. These forms are "fill-in-the-blank", short answer forms that have fourteen (14) categories for specific information. There is space on the form for approximately one hundred twenty (120) separate facts on each of the diseases. There is also space for the inclusion of additional data that you may wish to include to customize or personalize your study notes.
EVALUATION
Blank versions of these “expanded SOAP note” forms are also used as a ten minute, timed quiz to test your recall of the data that you supplied. You must pass at least ten "fill-in-the-blank", "expanded SOAP note" quizzes, on ten different diseases, in each of the ten organ systems, for a total of 100 quizzes passed with a score of seventy-five or higher before you may begin taking the timed multiple choice examinations.
The final portion of the course is a series of ten examinations composed of 100 multiple choice, best answer type questions. These questions are also grouped together by organ systems. This grouping allows for the identification of specific areas of weakness. Three of these examinations must be passed with a score of seventy-five or higher in order to pass the course.
ABOUT THE DEVELOPMENTAL BACKGROUND
The format for the lecture outlines, or expanded "SOAP" notes, presented in this course was developed to ensure that lectures to first year physician assistant students were comprehensive enough to provide a solid foundation in basic adult medicine. They were organized and designed to be easy to follow and easy to remember.
The learning system utilized in this course is based upon the classical learning theories taught in the Psychology of Learning course. They include reading, writing and repetition of data to improve memory and recall. Also, the use of familiar memory aids called flags improved recall. Additionally, words and short phrases were easier to remember than sentences and paragraphs. We simply applied these theories to medical education and modified them. We expanded a version of the "SOAP" medical record entry system designed and made famous by Dr Weed. The expansion of the classical "SOAP" note was necessary in order to include some information in lectures that was not appropriate for a medical record entry but was included on the national board examinations.
Over the years, the "expanded SOAP note" format was modified several times before the current form was produced. The goal was to develop a methodology for facilitating the recall of a large amount of information about a large number of diseases. The blank "expanded SOAP note" quiz was the result efforts to force students to enhance the level of their learning from the recognition level to the applied recall and analysis level. The emphasis on key word recall was developed to quantify and measure the number of separate and specific facts that were recalled for each flag associated with each disease.
It should be understood that the "expanded SOAP notes" cannot contain every known fact about a particular disease. Rather, they should be viewed as a fairly comprehensive "thumbnail sketch" of each disease. The information contained in the "expanded SOAP notes" should be a compilation of data from several primary reference medical textbooks. Whenever conflicts between textbooks are identified, the opinion of the majority should be reflected. If there is no clear majority, then all of the data is reflected as "possible" or "probable". |
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 Register
today to:
- Identify your medical
knowledge deficiencies
- Improve your medical knowledge data base
- Improve your retention
- Improve your recall
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Register
today to:
- Improve Program retention
- Improve your Board
pass rate
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