Some medical professors are turning toward an unconventional resource to teach medical students how to diagnose diseases: a radio talk show about car repairs, reports NPR.
NPR's show "Car Talk," in which brothers Tom and Ray Magliozzi used a step-by-step method to diagnose car troubles, ran from 1977 to 2012. Gurpreet Dhaliwal, MD, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, has been a lifelong fan of "Car Talk" and shares clips of the show with his first-year medical students.
"I would listen to their podcast every weekend," he told NPR. "One day I said to myself, 'My goodness, these guys are doing the same job I have.' They collect the data, define the problem and pick from several solutions. That's essentially what a doctor does."
Dr. Dhaliwal uses clips of the Peabody Award-winning show to teach his students how to use clinical reasoning skills to sift through what information is important to reach an accurate diagnosis. He also published a 2011 article about the teaching approach in JAMA.
To view NPR's full article, click here