A WORKSHEET TO STRUCTURE TEACHING AND LEARNING OUTPATIENT INTERNAL-MEDICINE

The Worksheet for Ambulatory Medicine (WAM) was designed to enhance te aching and learning outpatient general internal medicine. It contains a set of explicit learning objectives, promotes important teaching str ategies, and carefully structures educational and patient care activit ies. WAM may help students by: (1) demonstrating methods for more focu sed history-taking, physical examination, and case-presentation; (2) i ncreasing preceptor feed-back; (3) making performance expectations exp licit; (4) facilitating and encouraging self-directed learning and ref lective, evidence-based, practice; (5) promoting autonomous evaluation and management of outpatient problems; and (6) demonstrating an appro ach to evaluating undifferentiated clinical problems. WAM may help tea chers by: (I) identifying student learning needs; (2) increasing struc ture and control of teaching sessions; and (3) helping demonstrate ste ps in the clinical reasoning process. WAM has been pilot-tested with t hird- and fourth-year medical students. Informal feedback has been fav orable, and formal evaluation of the worksheet is underway.