Abstract
This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Infectious diseases, being a cognitive specialty, is commonly perceived to be difficult to teach at the bedside. Most junior doctors have had variable amounts of exposure to infectious diseases as medical students, primarily in the form of lectures as part of a microbiology curriculum. Teaching principles of infectious diseases practice to junior doctors is essential to develop good antibiotic prescribing skills. We suggest a practical guide with 3 x 3 steps to teach infectious disease practice at the bedside. We have attempted to outline the anticipated problems with the instruction of Infectious disease practice in the clinical setting and then have proceeded to adopt an expanded version of the clinical micro-skills model to address those gaps.
Highlights
Infectious diseases, being a cognitive specialty, is commonly perceived to be difficult to teach at the bedside
Teaching principles of infectious diseases practice to junior doctors is quintessential to develop good antibiotic prescribing skills (Pulcini & Gyssens, 2013)
Most junior doctors have had variable amounts of exposure to Infectious diseases practice as medical students depending on the curriculum design
Summary
This is perhaps the most crucial question of part A. Inability to provide a sound justification for providing more insight into the learner’s capability This step may further be used to help the learner give ‘problem representation’ with semantic qualifiers (Cox, Irby, & Bowen, 2006), another useful way to stimulate clinical reasoning. (Explore alternatives/Differentials) This step of part A asks the learner to provide a list of differentials with a brief justification It is much more relevant/pertinent in ‘undifferentiated’ cases. We feel that this is crucial as it avoids the pitfall of certain cognitive biases such as premature closure, attribution bias, and representation bias This step helps the learner appreciate that uncertainty or ambiguity is part of clinical practice and helps deal with it. E.g.: Case 1 - Another possibility to explain her symptoms is pelvic inflammatory disease with urethritis (as she has a backache with fevers, besides dysuria) Case 2 - Possible differentials for this young man with fever, rash, conjunctivitis include an adenoviral infection (given the history of sick contact with a child), ZIKAvirus infection (given the demographics and general condition) etc
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