Critical Clinical Competencies (CCC) Curriculum

In the CCC curriculum, students watch a physician and standardized patient enact a history and physical examination sequence. The video stops at intervals and asks the student his/her current differential diagnosis. After the student has typed in his or her reasoning, a video-recorded panel discussion among physicians from different specialties considers the same data as just seen by the student, and generates an expert list of differential diagnoses, role modeling expert reasoning. The student then is asked to compare his/her differential with that of the panel before moving on to the next section of the history and/or physical examination. This engages students by allowing them to compare their clinical reasoning to the thinking of practicing physicians evaluating the same cases. The videos allow students to ‘see’ the thinking of physicians--a goal that is frequently espoused in medical education theory but rarely systematically accomplished for all students in practice.  It also freed the clerkship year to be unapologetically idiosyncratic and opportunistic, since all students encounter all 144 diagnoses during the CCCs.  Learn more about the CCCs here, or view a demo here.