Social Constructivism in Medical School Where Students Become Patients with Dietary Restrictions.

Background: Experiential vertical integration of basic science with clinical concepts remains a challenge in medical school curricula. In addition, training physicians in nutritional competency that translates into patient care is a challenging endeavor ranging from biochemical mechanisms to socioeconomic challenges.

Methods: Employing a social constructivism paradigm, we implemented a collaborative cook-off competition in a basic science course where 140 first-year medical students per year translated their studies of inborn errors of metabolism, energy metabolism, micronutrients and immunology into edible creations intended for people with disorders requiring dietary management.

Applying Metacognition Through Patient Encounters and Illness Scripts to Create a Conceptual Framework for Basic Science Integration, Storage, and Retrieval.

Problem: Medical school curriculum continues to search for methods to develop a conceptual educational framework that promotes the storage, retrieval, transfer, and application of basic science to the human experience. To achieve this goal, we propose a metacognitive approach that integrates basic science with the humanistic and health system aspects of medical education.

Intervention: During the week, via problem-based learning and lectures, first-year medical students were taught the basic science underlying a disease.