The case-based learning day: introducing problem-based learning into a traditional medical curriculum.

Abstract

The Case-based Learning Day (CBLD) is a brief, self-contained exercise that is designed to introduce students and faculty within a medical school with a traditional curriculum to one of the methods which promote active, self-directed learning of pre-clinical medical disciplines. Clinical cases which raise important issues in the preclinical medical sciences are presented to small groups of students before the students have had teaching on those topics in their regular course. In conjunction with faculty tutors who are not experts on either the disease or the basic science issues raised by the case, the students use background reading and data about the patient to select for themselves a small number of topics to study in depth. They design and carry out their own study plan, making use of printed and audio-visual resources of their own choice and, if desired, faculty resource people. Their task is to apply basic science to help explain the underlying mechanisms of some aspects of the patient problem. Stud...