Happy fall y’all! Two Pills Podcast is back from summer break and better than ever!

Resources: 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5339583/ 

https://ep.bmj.com/content/105/4/236 

Can you increase your confidence (intervals) in teaching biostatistics?! 

Oh, biostatistics. A subject that strikes fear into anyone studying for an exam that contains them, someone presenting a journal club, or even analyzing your own data for research. Today, I am going to be describing a systematic approach to biostatistics that may help you in teaching the content and help your students with application. 

Healthcare professionals are required to continuously update their knowledge; therefore, our students need the skills for life-long learning, as well as an appreciation for the scientific method. Biostatistics is the “basic science” of quantitative evaluation of evidence and students will need to require evidence for methods of: prevention, diagnosis, and therapy/management in the treatment of medical conditions. Students need to know how to interpret diagnostic procedures and apply them to individual patients. Students need to develop the skills to read the medical literature with confidence in their ability to evaluate the validity of articles. 

Often, students are taught biostatistics in a lecture-based format. When I was taught biostats in professional school, I think I had last seen statistics in high school during AP statistics. As we’ll discuss, repetition is key for understanding and applying biostatistics. After they initially learn about biostatistics, their first presentations on statistical analysis may be in the high-pressure environment of a journal club. I think we have all seen the spectrum of confidence that students have when presenting statistics in a journal club.  

I first became interested in augmenting my teaching of biostatistics in an interprofessional setting. I was working with a medical residency and they wanted to increase the structure of their journal club/biostatistics curriculum. The milestones that I attempted to address were: 

PBLI -1: Locates, appraises, and assimilates evidence from scientific studies related to the patients’ health problems  

Level 1: Describes basic concepts in clinical epidemiology, biostatistics, and clinical reasoning Categorizes the design of a research study  

Level 2: Identifies pros and cons of various study designs, associated types of bias, and patient-centered outcomes Formulates a searchable question from a clinical question Evaluates evidence-based point-of-care resources  

Level 3: Applies a set of critical appraisal criteria to different types of research, including synopses of original research findings, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and clinical practice guidelines Critically evaluates information from others, including colleagues, experts, and pharmaceutical representatives, as well as patient-delivered information  

Level 4: Incorporates principles of evidence-based care and information mastery into clinical practice 

Level 5: Independently teaches and assesses evidence based medicine and information mastery techniques 

Resources: 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5339583/ 

https://ep.bmj.com/content/105/4/236 

For full episode notes and more information, visit www.twopillspodcast.com

Two Pills Tip: Positives of Pandemic Teaching and Learning!

Resources: 

https://news.cengage.com/higher-education/survey-about-half-of-faculty-are-more-positive-about-online-learning-today-than-pre-pandemic-and-expect-to-keep-new-teaching-techniques-and-digital-materials-in-place-post-pandemic/ 

Congratulations! Finished the semester and graduated another class of students! While there are MANY things we want to leave behind in the pandemic and revert back to the before-times, I wanted to take a minute to talk about the positives of teaching during the pandemic. What do you want to continue in your teaching? 

Stats: 

half of faculty (51 percent) are more positive about online learning today than pre-pandemic. Most faculty (71 percent) said their teaching in Fall 2020 was “very different” or included a “number of changes” and almost half (47 percent) expect those changes to remain post-pandemic...

For full episode notes and resources visit us at www.twopillspodcast.com 

Two Pills Tip: Video Assignments!

Having students create short, video content for online learning can increase STEM self‐efficacy (Campbell et al., 2020), and thus, making student content part of the course can be beneficial. 

Students are (generally) VERY comfortable creating videos-Snapchat, TikTok, Reels, etc 

Assign via link, immediately asks student to record, goes into folder you design for this assignment, student lists their unique link as answer to quiz 

Practice, edit, assign short videos 

Many different options-students can even set up a zoom meeting by themselves (I often do this so that I can have a creative virtual background), for informal, can just record on their phone and upload...

For full episode notes and resources visit us at www.twopillspodcast.com

Interview with Gina Thomas!

Gina brings more than 35 years of healthcare expertise to Nobis Rehabilitation Partners, LLC. Gina has held a number of clinical and leadership roles in non-profit acute care hospitals, for-profit, public, and private organizations. 

Prior to Nobis, Gina served as the Chief Development Officer at Lumere where she built the commercial and marketing foundation. She brings a wealth of healthcare, clinical and operational knowledge and is known for 'connecting the dots' in healthcare. Prior to Lumere, Gina held business development and consulting roles at The Advisory Board and MedAssets with the early portion of her career devoted to clinical roles at 11 different healthcare organizations.​

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Gina is a licensed Registered Nurse and holds a Master's of Business Administration. She currently serves as an adviser to the Co-Founders at CoverMe and Inlightened. Gina has also served as a leader or adviser on a number of professional non-profit organizations.

Full episode notes and more available at www.twopillspodcast.com

How are you preparing for the semester? 

Welcome to 2021! I hope you all had a great holiday! I ended up contracting Covid, so I have not been recording recently. Thankfully, my symptoms were mild and I am excited for the new year! I think many of us are cautiously optimistic and hopeful about what 2021 could bring.  

As we start January, consider this question-how prepared are you for the semester? You may have taught the same content in previous years, but how could you improve it this year? Have you switched to remote learning? If you switched to remote learning in Spring 2020, it was probably more of an emergent online teaching situation rather than a prepared and fully thought out plan. Now, you have some time left to prepare! Based on the resources listed at twopillspodcast.com, I have some areas to keep in mind as you plan for Spring 2021. 

Clarity: Students and instructors have had to increase our flexibility over the past year. With changes in how students attend class, how we teach, and how we take students on rotations-there have been quite a few variations to adapt to. Clarity of due dates and expectations can only help during this time. In my experience, overcommunication and with a variety of methods can help students meet or exceed expectations. Have a calendar, syllabus, course platform, emails, and/or verbal reminders. While it may feel excessive, a specific type of communication is likely preferred for some students over another type. Encourage students to set alerts, reminders, and organize their calendars/planners at the beginning of the semester. If, and more likely when, we are to see changes to the way we teach or the way students attend class, I recommend over-communication and reminders of these changes as well.  

For full episode notes and more information head over to www.twopillspodcast.com

Interview with Dr. Meredith White about the fun and function of using Bitmoji in the (virtual) classroom!

Conquer your presentations with Canva! 

Resources: 

• https://www.canva.com/learn/10-ways-to-take-your-lessons-to-the-next-level-with-canva/ 
• https://practicaledtech.com/2020/01/07/ten-things-you-can-do-with-canva-in-your-classroom/ 
• https://www.bespokeclassroom.com/blog/2017/7/29/op660qadw8b5uzt4tq28ws3ryljfik 

What is Canva? 

• Web/app based platform 
• Free, then pay for use of certain images, more templates, etc 
• Build your own worksheets/exercises 
• I use frequently for brief presentations. I search “blank presentation” and then modify the template of the presentation. I enjoy the beautiful designs-so much better than the traditional slide shows we are used to. Additionally, we have to remember that most of our students have been seeing slideshows since they started school. Many of use utilized chalk/dry erase in addition to these slideshows. Our presentations should be consciously designed and engaging.  
• It *is* different than traditional slideshows. Bullet points/outline is not as easily formatted-it’s more of a free flowing design 
• I used the newsletter function to create a fun creative syllabus 
• Professional looking certificates/awards 
• Created digital escape room content 
• Unique templates like a timeline, gantt chart, etc 

Editing functions: 

• Gridlines 
• Slide sorter to see everything 
• Copy function to copy similar slides 
• Download and present easily! Can download as jpg, pdf, ppt, etc 
• Everything looks so professional! 

Full episode notes and more information available at www.twopillspodcast.com 

Resources: 

https://teacheveryday.com/escape-room-in-the-classroom/ 

https://www.edtechteam.com/blog/2017/08/break-out-of-classroom/ 

https://sites.google.com/site/digitalbreakouttemplate/home 

Escape rooms are SO hot right now.  I have seen diabetes escape rooms, gram positive infections escape rooms, and even interprofessional education escape rooms.  They sound daunting and difficult to create.  However, after making my first one, I can tell you-if you have worksheets, you can create an escape room! 

Who: I piloted it in my elective, so a smaller group.  Students were in teams of 2-3. 

What: This was an end of course review for an infectious disease elective 

Where: Classroom 

When: End of course 

Why:  

-Allows you to review many concepts in a short amount of time 

-Students are entirely immersed in the content as they attempt to solve the locks 

-Timer naturally creates sense of urgency and competition 

 .... Full episode information available at www.twopillspodcast.com 

Interview with Dr. Vanessa Holtgrave, PsyD, MS

Dr. Holtgrave is a professor of clinical and forensic psychology and a licensed clinical psychologist in the State of California. She has extensive experience in psychological assessment and diagnosis. She works closely with psychiatric medical professionals as part of a forensic team, provides consultations, and coordinates patient care with medical professionals in a psychiatric setting. Over the years she’s has worked within the prison system, juvenile detention facilities, and within community mental health. Questions? Comments? Recommend someone for an interview? Contact us [email protected] or find us on twitter @twopillspodcast! 

Highlights (full transcript at www.twopillspodcast.com): Forensic psychology is the intersection of mental health and the legal system. There are many branches. It could be police psychology, correctional psychology, and expert witness testimony; there are so many different areas. Clinical psychology is working more in the community where you might be working with individuals with severe and persistent mental illness. They cross over where you may be working with similar individuals in the correctional setting. It's not really it like CSI like everyone thinks. I really love working with other professionals. On the forensic team, we work with psychiatrists, psychiatric nurse practitioners, public defenders, judges, case managers, all kinds of different professionals. It's nice to be able to bounce ideas off of each other in a respectful way. It's a focus on how do we get this person help so that they stay out of the justice system? I really wanted to challenge myself after getting my Ph.D. and one of my friends started teaching and said that she needed someone to teach clinical assessment. I thought everyone would be fighting for that class because it's so exciting. I just loved it so much. I think new faculty should invest in Red Bulls. Being a professor does not have to be so dichotomous. You can have high standards for your students, but also be supportive. You also want to make the student experience fun. You don't have to have that be at the sake of standards. I see that that kind of dichotomous approach where you have to be strict with your grading and then can't be supportive or give them additional opportunities. I wish someone had told me that lectures don't have to be perfect. I probably spent 20 to 30 hours on my lecture and then worried about if there would be extra time and I wanted to make sure to include the specific active learning strategies. You can let yourself get too lost in that rabbit hole. I wish someone had told me that they didn't have to be perfect because students will still have their questions about the content and what is most important is that they're learning. Each person has their own coping skills or lack of coping skills. They have their own support system or lack of support system. What a person is going through is not something that you have gone through. Patience, clients, and students, humble me and remind me to be sensitive to the fact that they have their own experiences. Our students are a bunch of superheroes. They balance school with everything else going on in their lives. As faculty and Scholar practitioners, we need to remember that these students are coming from a different place and all need different types of support. It's not being needy or putting in less effort. They just may need a different type of support or level of support. For me, it's about making the time for people in your life. It may be deciding that I'm not going to open my laptop or I'm not going to work from home. It sounds like an anti resolution. I'm going to go hiking with my friends this weekend and I'm going to make the time for it. If I were to describe happiness on a certain day, it comes from those kinds of interactions. 

Can we make teaching online more fun? Let’s talk about  Post-its!  

We are all working on a transition to online teaching (or maybe you have already been teaching online)! How do you inspire students to brainstorm online? Can we go beyond message boards to something with more versatility? There are many ways to do this! Today, I am going to talk about online interactive post-it notes. The product that I am most familiar with for achieving this goal is Padlet. So, what are some ways that you can use this type of app to enhance your teaching? 

Resources:  

https://ditchthattextbook.com/20-useful-ways-to-use-padlet-in-class-now/ 

https://www.bookwidgets.com/blog/2017/08/30-creative-ways-to-use-padlet-for-teachers-and-students 

https://padlet.com/anissa1/iPadWorkshop2015 

What is it? 

Web-based app that allows posting of notes on a digital wall (notes can be posted anonymously or attached to a username). Files, images, videos, and links can be uploaded to the wall. Notes can be moved around to arrange into categories, ranking, or however you would like!  

Full episode notes available at www.twopillspodcast.com