Effective Strategies Used in Teaching A Health Assessment and Physical Diagnosis Course to Distance Students

Teaching advanced health assessment and physical diagnosis to distance students can be challenging. Challenges include teaching and evaluating the performance of an advanced history and physical examination and beginning development of selecting differential diagnoses. In a large urban academic medical center university, faculty developed multiple strategies to meet these challenges. The purpose of this abstract is to discuss these strategies including: 1) use of a publisher based curriculum enhanced with instructor material, 2) use of a test security application, 3) synchronous discussion, 4) SOAP note discussion board activities, 5) submission of video-taped history and physical examinations, 6) and two on-campus lab days. The Blackboard Learning System is used for web based course management. Both publisher based curriculum material and faculty developed materials are utilized. Examinations are given online using Respondus LockDown Browser™. The Wimba Classroom is a synchronous online tool where students meet with the faculty in a virtual classroom. The students participate in four clinical scenario SOAP note activities. The students are divided into two rotating groups, with one group writing up a SOAP note, while the other group critiques the notes, and provides differential diagnoses. Two video-taped assignments are required. Students are given a handout with instructions for video recording. Students recruit a “model patient” for both assignments. The first assignment is a comprehensive history and physical examination done early in the course, to evaluate current knowledge. The second assignment is an advanced episodic history and physical examination in which scenarios are provided. Toward the end of the course, the students come to campus for a two-day clinical experience. They view faculty demonstrations and complete clinical scenarios in small clinical groups. Despite the challenges of engaging distance students from across the nation in a health assessment class, the vast majority of the students successfully met the course objectives.