Teaching on a clinical shift can sometimes be difficult: it’s busy, everyone’s running around and it’s hard to capture a trainees attention. Recently, on twitter, Amal Mattu (@amalmattu) has been posting pictures of his white board teaching: discrete pearls written down and shared with anyone who walks by. The pearls are often prompted by patients presenting during that shift but they don’t have to be. It’s an excellent pro approach to clinical teaching shared by a master. One of the limitations that was pointed out, though, was that many of us no longer have white boards in the department. Enter master educators Michelle Lin (@M_Lin) and Rob Cooney (@EMEducation) who started using post-it notes to the same effect. There are a number of advantages to the post it as well:
- Works anywhere. All you need is a pocket full of post-it notes
- Can be left behind to spark conversation and teaching long after you’re gone
- Size mandates that only short, quick teaching points are used (pair with a Sharpie marker to enhance this aspect)
Here are some post-it pearls from the last couple weeks (sorry, summer’s made us a bit lazy).