I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.

-- Ancient Chinese Proverb

Computing technology serves an important role in medical education today. It supports and enhances the ability of instructors to communicate with their trainees and instill the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors that enable appropriately focused lifelong learning and excellence in patient care. Medical computing can also assist physicians in their role as information managers.
 
Computing technology is playing an increasingly important role in undergraduate, graduate, and continuing medical education. As medical educators, we need to continually share ideas, experiences and innovative ways of teaching physicians to ask important clinical questions, match the questions to those information resources most likely to contain pertinent information, understand the quality and value of the information retrieved, and apply the information to improve teaching, learning, and clinical care.
 
The areas being explored include:

• What computing tools are available for finding, retrieving, appraising, and applying medical information to the needs of the learner? What are effective and efficient strategies for retrieving relevant, high-quality citations from huge databases of medical literature?
   
  
• What computing functions can be applied to facilitate the learning and use of evidence-based medicine principles to enhance appraisal and application of new information?
   
  
• To what extent should traditional large group lectures be replaced by computer sessions during which students find information and apply it in real-time simulations, such as laboratory experiences or patient encounters?
   
  
• What is the new role of medical libraries (physical and virtual) with the re-engineering of medical education?
   
  
• What can be done to improve the acceptance of computer applications for medical education among learners and teachers?
   
  
• What medical informatics skills should be included in the undergraduate and graduate medical curriculum? How does mastery of information technologies affect how physicians think about medicine, in addition to how medicine is practiced?
   
  

As computing technology improves our access to free medical information resources, we have an unprecedented opportunity to share and expand our teaching and learning skills. The World Wide Web can help us all keep track of high quality educational tools, sites, and strategies, and discover their best uses. It can also foster the sharing of original research, perspectives, and experiences on the use of computing technology in pre-medical undergraduate education, undergraduate medical education (medical students), and graduate medical education (residency and subspecialty training programs).
 
As physicians, we are all medical educators, teaching our patients, trainees, and each other. Computing technology adds new tools to enhance this role.
 

"No bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that
blown by the successful teacher."

-- Sir William Osler

of other articles
 
Other Musings