Implementing Pathology Peer Teaching Program in a Medical School

Purpose Pathology intimidates many first‐year medical students because it requires interdisciplinary critical thinking required to diagnose and to treat disease, and often, students are uninterested in the subject. These two factors cause students to disengage in the educational setting. To combat this problem, a mutually‐beneficial pilot teaching assistant (TA) program was developed in a General Pathology course to facilitate first‐year medical students’ abilities to apply General Pathology to integrative, interdisciplinary questions early in undergraduate medical education. TAs were second‐year medical students who cognitively benefited from the experience of teaching first years through the educational principle “To teach is to learn something twice,” thus aiding in their preparations for licensure examinations. Methods Thirteen (13) medical students from the second‐year Systemic Pathology class at an urban osteophathic medical school volunteered to serve as TA’s for the first‐year General Pathology class. The first‐year General Pathology class consisted of 135 medical students, divided into 23 small groups composed of between two to eight students per group. The 23 groups were then divided into two lecture halls. At least one pathology faculty member was also present in each lecture hall. First‐year students were presented with an integrative pathology case, provided to second‐year students in advance, and given guiding questions with the support of their assigned second‐year TA to develop critical thinking. Results Results consisted of positive preliminary feedback in the program’s initial implementation in the Spring 2019 semester from both first‐year students interested in exposure to board‐relevant questions early in their education and second‐year medical students actively preparing for their board examinations and interested in reviewing first‐year material. Conclusion Pathology requires the integration of foundational concepts from anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, and immunology to understand the various aspects of the disease process. Training developed in digesting complex material is of utmost importance for success on national licensure examinations, such as the United States Medical Licensing Examinations (USMLE) and Comprehensive Osteopathic Medical Licensing Examinations of the United States of America (COMLEX‐USA), for board certification. The pilot teaching assisting program in the General Pathology course exposed first‐year medical students to challenging, integrative questions early in undergraduate medical education and re‐exposed second‐year medical students who were actively preparing for licensure examinations, benefiting both sets of students. Further studies will evaluate the effectiveness of the pathology teaching assistant program on academic performance and on licensure examinations.