Learning syndromes afflicting beginning medical students: identification and treatment––reflections after forty years of teaching

Abstract

During 40 years experience teaching beginning medical students primarily microscopic anatomy (cell biology, histology and embryology), but also occasionally neuroanatomy and gross anatomy and while serving as the course director for Microscopic Anatomy for 18 years and counseling students with academic performance problems, a set of syndromes were identified that impact on student learning. Each of these syndromes were given names reflective of the underlying problem, i.e. ‘Oh Yeah’, ‘Too Many Books’, ‘Six Chambered Heart’, ‘Old Test Question’, ‘Slip and Slide’, etc. syndromes. In this paper each syndrome is presented and discussed and specific treatments for each syndrome are presented. In addition, advice for beginning medical students on how to study (‘The Split Brain’ method), developed in association with the treatments for the syndromes, is presented.

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Notes on contributors

E. Robert Burns

BOB BURNS is a Professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Developmental Sciences (former name was Anatomy). He currently is, for a three-year term (2005–2007), the Charles Hartzell Lutterloh and Charles M. Lutterloh Professor of Medical Education Excellence in the College of Medicine. He is a professionally trained anatomist having taken and taught all of the subdisciplines of anatomy (Gross Anatomy, Histology, Embryology and Neuroanatomy) as well as completing a minor in pathology as a graduate student in the Department of Anatomy, Tulane University School of Medicine. He held a NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Pathology, The George Washington University, Washington, DC before joining his current department. His area of research is experimental oncology, especially circadian-timed chemotherapy or chronochemotherapy. He has slightly less than 100 research publications. Early in his academic career he held a Research Career Development Award from the National Cancer Institute/NIH. He has authored/co-authored four texts in the general area of Medical Histology.