Psychosomatic Medicine 22:400-406 (1960)
© 1960 American Psychosomatic Society

A New Method in Medical Education

¹ Departments of Psychiatry and Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.

This report describes a small-group method which has been developed for problems involving doctor-patient interaction. It is derived from the case conference but substitutes for a patient a prepared case designed to highlight certain points in diagnosis and management. This innovation obviates the dependency upon available patients for teaching material and involves the students emotionally by permitting them to test their plan of management against the actual outcome of the case. In an effort to give the students greater responsibility for eliciting the information used in their discussion, they were asked to take the parts of both patient and physician in a series of interviews. These exercises were characterized by intense student participation, eager experimentation with interviewing techniques, and group support for the student physician as he explored new ways of dealing with his patient. This technique should be useful in widely varying kinds of groups with widely varying goals.