Clinical correlations has surprisingly turned out to be one of the most beneficial classes I have taken in PA school thus far. It has been an eye-opening experience, allowing me to understand some of my strengths and weaknesses, as well as enable me to see how my clinical knowledge has progressed through each round throughout the year. These questions were prompts given to help me share some of my thoughts on my experiences taking this course.

What problems did you encounter while you were completing the work for this class?

The problem I encountered the most while completing work for this class was understanding how to take a large amount of information on a specific topic and narrowing it down to the most important details needed when I am presenting information.

What resources did you find most helpful – which ones will you use going forward in the clinical year?

The resources I found most helpful were up to date and access medicine for general knowledge, and pub med for peer- review articles. These are the ones I think I will use going forward in the clinical year and I’m eager to expand my resources and use TRIPP, Cochrane database and more.

What have you learned about yourself through this class?

Throughout this class, I have gotten the opportunity to learn more about the art of presenting information to an audience. With the amount of  medical/clinical information we were required to research and present each week, I had to learn more about how to present the information including the main points while engaging and capturing the audiences attention. I realized that I was not as great of a presenter as I thought I was before coming into PA school. Overtime, I learned that my presentation skills improved the more time I took to rehearse before presenting so that the presentation became second nature.

Do you think your approach has been different from others’ – if so, is that desireable/undesireable?  Why?

I believe that my approach has been different from others in my class  when it came to presenting information. I got to learn how some of my other classmates narrowed down the detailed information and also engaged the other classmates by asking the audience questions throughout their presentations. My approached to presenting initially was just trying to share as much info about a topic in order to teach the audience. I realized that this approach sometimes can make it harder for the audience to stay engaged. I believe that I have improved on this since the first semester.

What changes might you suggest for this class going forward?

I believe this class was great the way it is to be honest. I do think it can be beneficial if the professors one by one selected each class member to contribute something toward the case so that everyone participates. Something that could be cool and interesting to add would be a sim lab component to the cases. This would be good preparation for sim lab exams without the added pressure of being in an exam. An example how of how this could occur would be after gathering HPI and physical in the sim lab, run a simulation in the lab so that the cases can be even more interactive. This would need fine tuning, but I think it can be fun.

What would you advise the students in the class behind you about this course?

I would advise students in the class behind me to take advantage of what this class has to offer. The course will help in learning more about how to work up a medical case, strengthen gathering history and developing differential dx. It will also help with becoming a better researcher and learning new ideas on how to present cases to an audience.

Overall Views.

Researching the topics each week was fun for me and I found it rewarding to be able to find a research article on a medical topic and apply the information presented to the clinical cases. The research articles helped me understand the clinical information better as well.

I enjoyed the clinical cases we had each week. I was able to fine tune my history gathering skills and learn from the professors as well as my classmates on their approach to each case. I also got to understand more on the application of each lab test, diagnostic and treatment for each case. The best part of this process for me was developing differential diagnoses and observe how they can be changed based on the information discovered about the patient as the case went on. I liked working a a team on each case as well. Being able to see how my classmates thought about each case and work together to come up with the correct differential diagnoses was a great experience.