Illinois Medicine

'A Better Advocate for My Patients' back of one another's teaching at the end of each of the three instructional units throughout the year. In addition, faculty members provide summative feedback of each student's knowledge, skill, attitude and professionalism through a narrative evaluation. "It's doing what the faculty members would do, take presentation of the dissected anatomy from basic instruction to function, clinical correlations, spatial relationships—all the didactic instruction," says Norm Lieska, PhD, associate professor of anatomy and cell biology and director of the first-year Gross Human Anatomy & Embryology course. The new approach saves students time—dissecting an organ or region of the body can take three or four hours, but UI Health resident Patti Chico, MD '12, reflects back on productive first year C ontemporary medical education and training includes much more than basic science and clinical techniques, as Patti Chico, MD '12, was reminded throughout the first year of her family medicine residency at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System. "There's learning how to deal with a large caseload of patients, how to work with the medical team, and the medical system in general," she says. A native of the Clearing neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chico was inspired to become a doctor by her mother, a nurse practitioner who took her to the hospital with her on weekends when she worked. (John Chico, MD, her older brother, completed his family medicine residency at UI Health this past June.) Chico chose the College of Medicine for both her undergraduate medical studies and her residency because of the diversity of its student body and patient population. She chose family medicine as her specialty out of a desire to care for patients throughout their life span. In addition to feeling well-prepared in the fundamentals of medicine, Chico says she benefited from exposure to additional facets of the practice, such as learning to use electronic medical record systems, a requirement of the Affordable Care Act. Medical students receive access to the UI Health system during their third-year clinical rotations and enter patient notes in collaboration with the supervising resident. "Going in, it was very helpful that I'd seen this thing before and I know how to navigate it," she says. Chico also appreciates the emphasis on developing patient interaction skills that ran through her undergraduate medical education. "There's a huge focus on learning how to talk to patients. I feel very prepared in how I deal with patients and how I speak to a patient. Building that relationship with patients is at the center of what we're doing." Chico spent much of the first year of her residency at UI Hospital, rotating through different units that overlap her specialty, such as pediatrics and obstetrics, along with a half-day a week in an outpatient clinic and another half-day of lectures. "I've learned a lot this year," she says. "I'm gaining more tools to make me a better advocate for my patients and just trying to be as knowledgeable as I can in a way that will help my patients to the largest extent possible." — Kevin McKeough the teach-backs only take about an hour—and hones presentation and communication skills. "Over the years, students have become very proactive about their teaching," Lieska says. "They'll prepare a handout, many of them will prepare a PowerPoint presentation that they'll send out to their team, they'll do demonstrations using the lab's skeletons as well as demonstrating from the cadaver. And the narrative evaluation helps ensure growth in other than the purely academic arena." "I know I learned an organ best when I dissected it, because I had the experience of going through the body myself and seeing how the different relationships came into play between the different nerves and arteries and veins," adds Karl Becker, who completed the course this past academic year. "I also had to master it by the time I was teaching it the next morning, rather than for an exam a couple months away." Ana Mauro, who also just completed the course, found that the students helped make sure their team members learned the material thoroughly. "I was able to ask many questions of my peers without feeling shy," Mauro says. "If someone didn't understand the teach-back, my team members would do a second one at another time, and as an exam got closer, we would all get together and teach each other again." Photo: Lloyd De gr a n e Patti Chico recently completed her first year of residency at the Mile Square Health Clinic. 14 | Fa l l 2 013 Clinical Skill Simulation: Hands-on Preparation for Rotations Where the gross anatomy lab represents students' first experience with the hands-on approach Carr sees

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