Could you talk more about the PBL curriculum and what the group activities are like? Are there a lot of opportunities for community outreach in Columbia?
I can also add on this as a current M1. The PBL curriculum is just like Monkitty talked about. On M/W, you have a lecture from 8-9 and then PBL from 9-12. On Mondays, you create "student objectives," which you present on Wednesday before starting the next half of the case. In my experience, as I just started Block 2 this morning, we've gotten progressively better at creating student objectives that align with faculty objectives. Monkitty is also right regarding the initial cases in block 1, because our first couple of cases were learning lab values, what abnormalities meant, etc.
For Wednesdays, the case is typically finished up and comes to an end. You're given a sheet of faculty objectives, which is information the faculty wants you to take away from each case. Usually, in the beginning, you'll find these are more in-depth and quite specific compared to the student objectives you created on Monday. However, the information you learn from student objectives on Mondays can be quite valuable as the faculty objectives might not focus on those pieces of information. Still, you might need that information to interpret later cases, and often times you're
expected to know that information anyways regardless if it was a faculty objective or not. For example, there might not be a specific FO about interpreting a CMP; however, by focusing on how to interpret those values and abnormalities in a Monday objective, it will set you up to be successful and delay making further objectives about CMPs as the cases go on. You present these faculty objectives on Friday to your PBL group.
Fridays are usually reserved for presentations on faculty objectives from 8am-11am and then a "case wrap-up" meeting where a specialist or physician familiar with that diagnosis presents how they'd approach an actual patient who presents similarly to the one in the case. It's actually very insightful and interesting, and I enjoy them quite a bit. Lastly, Tuesdays and Thursdays are reserved for either lecture from 8am-12pm OR anatomy lab dissections from 8am-12pm.
With COVID, the group dynamic has been weird as your typical 8 person PBL group is split between two labs, and you discuss via Zoom. One of the issues I've noticed is that side conversations can be overwhelming and cumbersome. However, it's hard to minimize those conversations because they're a critical part of learning throughout PBL. I wonder if we'll ever see a movement back to an 8 person room for PBL before I finish M2, but it looks unlikely. However, I've still found that my lab group from Block 1 got along really well, and we learned how to navigate through those issues, which led to an incredibly successful team dynamic as we finished the final weeks.
Each case has a quarterback, scribe, dictionarion, and objectifier who play critical roles to ensure all pertinent information is recorded, the group is kept on track, and objectives are created that are relevant to the gaps in your knowledge. The facilitator for each PBL case jumps between rooms every week, due to COVID, so whichever room the facilitator is in determines which room has those PBL roles that week. You can learn more about these roles during the interview process
Based on my initial impressions and worries with how COVID would impact PBL and group dynamics, I'm impressed with how Mizzou has handled it.
Regarding community outreach, there are a ton of opportunities to get involved. I can't begin to describe the countless emails I get each week to help volunteer with local food pantries, soup kitchens, MedZou's clinic, assisting with immunizations, etc. Mizzou has a wide variety of paths you can take to give back and reach out to local community members throughout your time in med school.
