Teachable Moments, Learnable Moments: Medical Rounds as a Paradigm for Education

Abstract

The medical profession has for almost a century employed various types of "Rounds" as pedagogical tools to engage physicians, physicians-in-training, and their health care teams in the clinical diagnosis and treatment of patients. More recently, this validated paradigm of medical rounds (MR) has been extended to the field of education, where it is being used as an effective strategy for administrators to better understand their own domain. There are four distinct types of MR which can be further analyzed to find commonalities and parallels with the domain of education. The four types of MR are (1) Morning Rounds, (2) Chart Rounds, (3) Grand Rounds, and (4) Ongoing Collaborations-each have unique pedagogical characteristics and serve different functions. They are, however, unified by common threads of dynamic and interpersonal interactions wherein teacher (physician) and learner (physician-in-training) share learning and fluidly exchange roles in the pedagogy. MR models supplant the now outmoded theory of the "empty vessel" and corroborate the concept of the teaching brain. A formal analysis of MR underscores its ongoing utility in education both for its pedagogical innovations and for the Interactive and inherently human attributes that are required between teacher and learner for its efficacy. © 2014 International Mind, Brain, and Education Society and Blackwell Publishing, Inc.