PBL third session

I am in my second week of the module. I just had my third and last PBL session of the module and I am quite happy with how it went. I am quite pleased with my PBL group as well to be honest. This is my first module of the second semester which means we got put into new PBL groups. Everyone is chatty and is eager to contribute in my new group and there is no one that just sits there quietly. This is a far cry from my last module when most of my group was quite shy and needed much encouragement from our facilitator. This hasn’t been the case so far in my current group.

We go through each of the objectives and discuss what we have found and each person contributes something different to add to the knowledge. Then if there are any irregularities we discuss even more and make sense of our findings. If there is anything that anyone doesn’t understand then we explain it to them. I like this way of learning. Sometimes it seems like we have so much to learn and in such a short space of time but we cover a lot. We also cover so many different aspects to the topic. For example we don’t just learn anatomy and physiology; our course is structured so that we cover sociology and psychology too as well as wider aspects that are relevant to the topic. We have 4 headings that we have to formulate objectives under.

Structure and function – this is all the anatomy, physiology, histology etc that is relevant to the scenario.

Population perspective – these are the issues that are raised in the scenario that are to do with the population as a whole. These include government measures, statistics and epidemiology.

Personal professional development – this is quite an obscure heading. This involves aspects of medicine to do with career progression and life working as a doctor. For example we learn about other healthcare professionals that doctors work with as well as the NHS as an organisation.

Individuals, groups and societies – this heading covers issues to do with people directly. This encompasses psychology and sociology issues.

Usually the structure and function takes the most time to cover.

I quite like the people in my group too. We seem to get on in the social sense too. That’s good. In my last group we used to sit awkwardly before our session and often run out of things to talk about. I guess your personal experiences of PBL and your enjoyment comes from the people in your group and how much you are willing to contribute and take part. Many people will say negative things about PBL but it depends on your individual experiences and how willing you are to make the most out of your opportunities.