{ Projects Bulletin }
The Calgary Guide: A Simpler Way to Understand Medicine
Yan Yu and Sean Spence Effective training of future physicians is a goal shared by all countries. Even though medical education systems are different in every country, there are common challenges facing medical students regardless of where they study. One challenge is that students must learn an immense amount of information within a limited period of time. To accomplish this, medicine has traditionally been taught via lists: lists of signs, symptoms, complications, and differential diagnoses. While these lists are straightforward to learn from, for new medical learners they are often not adequately explained. Facing time pressure, students may be pushed, by these lists, towards rote memorization, and away from true understanding of material. To help students adequately – and easily – understand such lists, medical students at the University of Calgary developed “The Calgary Guide to Understanding Disease” (www.thecalgaryguide. com). Since the launch of our website in August 2012, our freely available online content has been downloaded over 30,000 times in 60 countries (at the time of writing this article). We now have learning material for over 170 topics, covering most disciplines in medicine, with content for hundreds of additional topics on its way. There are several things we do well that we think has helped make this resource so useful to students around the world: 1. First, medical students author all content, ensuring that our material is worded at a level that’s easy for medical students to understand, and understand quickly. We do, of course, ensure factual correctness via thorough faculty review.
medical students worldwide | Chile AM13
2. Second, we fully explain “why” diseases present the way they do. Our flow-charts explicitly lay out all the mechanisms essential for understanding the manifestation of the disease in question. We make explicit the thought-processes intuitive to practicing physicians, so that new medical learners can understand the disease without feeling like they’re missing chunks of information essential to their learning. 3. Third, we “divide and conquer”. Complex topics such as Myocardial Infarctions and COPD are divided into various aspects (history, physical exam, investigations, etc.) so as to not overwhelm medical students. 4. Fourth, The Calgary Guide is freely accessible worldwide, to anyone with an internet connection. We strongly believe there should be no financial barriers to superior medical education!
Yan is the Founder and Editor in Chief of The Calgary Guide.
Taken together, by introducing a resource that connects pathophysiology with disease manifestation in a thorough yet easy-to-understand manner, we strive to foster durable learning and a greater mastery of the subject matter for fellow medical students. This, we hope, will help students excel in their academic and clinical endeavors. We feel privileged to be helping fellow students learn about medicine. Many of the students and physicians who read our slides have emailed us with comments and suggestions, making our content even better for our users around the world. Please feel free to do the same via the “Contact Us” section of our website! We can be found on facebook, or directly online at www.thecalgaryguide.com. We are continually expanding our database of learning materials – stay tuned for more content!
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Sean is the Editor in Chief of The Calgary Guide