Mile 768: The Learning-Teaching Pairing

Above: The Chicago skyline on the NB U.S. 41 Lake Shore Drive to SB Interstate 55 flyover. I love flyovers!

"SEE ONE, DO ONE,
TEACH ONE."

2007. I recall one of our professors in the anatomy lab at the campus in Dominica was talking to us about how things "roll" in the anatomy lab. After our class was split into three groups, one of the groups each day would go on in to the lab and dissect a part of the body. For the people who weren't dissecting on a given day, they had to come in and watch the group that was currently dissecting give a demo on what they found out on that day. And for the next day, we'd rotate a group, and the process was repeated over and over again throughout the semester.

Dr. Martin said this was his philosophy, to see one, do one, and teach one.

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There's truth to that statement, and I'm seeing how it works firsthand in the wards. For instance, this past week, our attending doctor had demonstrated to us how to perform a neonatal physical (see). As a group, we then spent time everyday to perform the physical exam (do). Finally, when a new group came in to work in the ward with us, we spent the time to teach them the procedure if the doctor wasn't available (teach).

And through doing all three, I would have gone through either a procedure or a nugget of information, three times (and the procedure amazingly stuck!). Most would agree that in order to teach one has to learn. However, for me (but not for everybody), to learn one has to teach. It is commonly said that becoming a physician is a career of lifelong learning.

Right now, at this stage as a medical student, this is how I see it:

Throughout our careers, we have to keep up with the continuous research that goes on, filter out what's appropriate, and pass that information to improve the care of our patients. When we teach them what we learned (one way is through a doctor visit), I think that we have to pay attention to our patients, such as if we are communicating our ideas effectively to the patient or how well the treatments we plan are working. If something's wrong with that, we have to go back to the drawing board and start learning about that issue from square one again.

So after all that, I'll have to say that teaching and learning go hand in hand, and for me, one can't go without the other. For me, being enthusiastic about medicine (or just about anything) can make the processes of learning and teaching exponentially addictive.