Short description

Case teaching in rheumatology forms part of the Inflammation course. The purpose of this course is to provide the students with a research- and experience-based foundation for prevention, diagnostics, treatment and prognostication of diseases related to hepatology and gastroenterology, haematology, infectious medicine, nephrology and rheumatology, and to teach the students to use this research- and experience-based foundation as a basis for making decisions in the clinic.

Teacher's motivation

• There was a need to improve the students’ competences in pattern recognition of symptoms of connective tissue diseases, so that in their future practice as doctors, they would know when to refer real patients to a rheumatological department.    
• Moreover, the students should be able to combine and apply their knowledge of symptoms when needing to compile and recognise pathological conditions in patients.
• Finally, there was a wish to replace teaching based on one-way communication with activities with more student involvement.

Outcome of the activity

The teacher found that the activity resulted in significantly greater student involvement in class sessions. The previous tendency was that only a very small number of students were very involved in ordinary case reviews, whereas all students were involved in the Padlet teaching. Some students might be annoyed at becoming involuntarily activated, but the teacher still finds that their outcome is improved. View an evaluation of the activity here.

Worth considering

• When the students are personally involved in developing the activity, their learning outcome is improved, and the teacher’s use of resources is reduced.    
• It is possible to let the students prepare case patients as homework, which will release more time for the use and discussion in class of the created cases.