Decision-Based Learning

Karen Law, MD, assistant professor of rheumatology at Emory University, was awarded the Clinician Scholar Educator Award by the Rheumatology Research Foundation. She is using the Foundation’s support to test and further develop a novel curriculum for medical students focused on rheumatic disease and strengthening the education and training of future physicians. 

What is a Clinician Scholar Educator Award?

The Clinician Scholar Educator Award recognizes and supports rheumatologists who are dedicated to enhancing education in musculoskeletal and rheumatic diseases.

How was the basis for the curriculum developed?

As the associate director of Emory’s internal medicine clerkship, Dr. Law is responsible for organizing clinical experiences in a hospital setting for the university’s medical students. After assuming this position, she quickly identified opportunities to improve students’ learning and, in collaboration with another clerkship director, developed a new curriculum for internal medicine known as decision-based learning (DBL).

What is decision-based learning?

The DBL approach introduces medical knowledge in a fun, interactive, case-based curriculum while promoting deliberate, clinical decision-making and cost awareness. By using fictional and challenging case studies, students work in teams to solve the case by ordering and interpreting tests while striving to spend the least amount of money. Cases are designed to produce “moments of struggle” where students build clinical decision-making skills.

How will this award support the curriculum?

The Clinician Scholar Educator award allows Dr. Law to study the effectiveness of the DBL curriculum and expand the number of cases focused on rheumatic diseases and their complications, taking this novel approach of augmented, clinical decision-making and cost consciousness to rheumatology practice. Dr. Law’s work not only supports expansion of the case library, but also provides medical students with increased exposure to rheumatology, which is often sparse in medical school.

What are Dr. Law’s students saying about the curriculum?

“I think the decision-based learning activity gives everyone access to excellent, clinically-focused teaching outside of the clinic. So, it’s a classroom activity, but really it feels akin to my best clinical experience.”

“It really stimulated your mind to work through the case as opposed to just passively listening to a lecture.”

Where does Dr. Law see the curriculum going?

With the development of rheumatology DBL cases, Dr. Law hopes to highlight what rheumatologists encounter in their practice. The award will also provide an opportunity to assess her curriculum and develop skills as a medical educator. With data showing its effectiveness, she hopes to share the DBL curriculum with other institutions and encourage future physicians to learn about rheumatology while helping even more students develop critical-thinking skills.

In her own words, the Foundation’s support has helped Dr. Law “ensure this is a good educational experience, to make sure this is something that can be shared and used by other people outside of Emory, and to make sure that we’re not just teaching, but people are actually learning from what we’re doing.”