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Medical detectives investigate faux staff health symptoms to determine diagnosis
A group of student doctors sat across the table from their patient. Their patient, principal Dr. Sarah Moran, was explaining medical symptoms she was experiencing and hoping her middle school-aged doctors could help. The symptoms, thankfully, were scripted and part of a project for a Medical Detectives class at Holman Middle School.
In the class, students play the role of real-life medical detectives, collecting and analyzing medical data to diagnose diseases and solve medical mysteries through hands-on projects and labs.
“This class is for those kids that want to get into the medical field and see what it’s about,” middle school teacher Marian Mitchell said. “This is a Project Lead the Way (PLTW) class that teaches them the basics of biomed to see if they’re interested in it and it feeds into the biomedical program up at the high school. It shows them kind of what they can expect to start if they want to go into the four-year program in high school.”
Multiple units have been building to students diagnosing the staff at Holman. First, students learned about vital signs and determining how those vitals tie in with a patient’s symptoms, medical history and exam. They also learned how to read lab results, such as rapid antigen tests (like a strep throat or COVID test), and were assigned an illness and had to research what the treatment was. They also used a government website that outlines medications and researched which one would be the most effective.
To help gather what they’ve learned, students created a disease dictionary of about 15 to 18 different diseases from reputable sources like the Mayo Clinic and WebMD, as well as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website, if needed. At the end of the semester,
the students get to keep all of their work, including the disease dictionary, so they can have a reference to take to the high school.
“It’s a fun class, but it’s a challenging class,” Mitchell said. “But yet, some of our kids really do excel here because it’s hands-on and lots of thinking. Nobody’s working independently; work is always completed in teams,” Mitchell said. “We do that so we can be an encouragement to one another and because in the medical field, you’re never working a patient alone; you always have help.”
For the diagnosis activity, staff members at Holman volunteered to serve as patients. They received a symptom list and talking points about their illness so they could provide information to their doctors.
In prior activities, students were given a patient case file, but in this activity, they started from scratch and built their own case notes. The students worked together to develop questions and determined who would ask them to the patient. As they listened to the patient’s response, they took notes. Using that and any other patient history they had, they consulted their disease dictionary to determine what the illness was. Students had two tries to diagnose their patient before it negatively impacted their grade.
“I want you to have a little bit of stress, because in the medical field there are ramifications if you don’t diagnose somebody correctly, but not to the point where the stress is debilitating,” Mitchell said.
After correctly diagnosing the patient, each group had to write down what they were going to talk to the
patient about, including diagnosis and treatment plan.
“I felt so professional,” seventh grader Layla Stuart said. “I just felt like I was a real doctor. It felt like you were helping somebody even though it was fake.”
One of the groups had a patient who had been to the Appalachian Mountains. A student asked where that was and why that was relevant.
“They’re seeing that there is an importance to understanding regions when you’re dealing with medical status,” Mitchell said. “But also, whatever career you’re looking at, don’t you think you’re going to need this knowledge? How to research and learn? We all work together and this is what it is like in a job. You might have to research to find what you need to know. And that’s what they were doing. So when they have to look up, say, the Appalachian Mountains, they’re going to retain this knowledge and connect it to something else. So they’re going to hopefully remember it longer.”
In addition, the class incorporates science, as well as other core content areas, in fun ways. To test their math skills, students had to plate bacteria and measure the zone of inhibition to figure out which medicine is most effective in curing pneumonia.
At the beginning of the semester, students learned about vitals, which is a first indicator when investigating a diagnosis, but also something that is important for them to understand for their own health.
“It’s more than just teaching a class,” Mitchell said. “It’s real life things that they can take with them whether they go into medicine or a non-medical field. They are learning so many skills to help with their own personal health care. I teach them how to use their health app on their phones and how they can be tracking all this stuff. That’s something they’re going to retain.”
