Inoculating a New Generation: Immunology in Medical Education

Abstract

Educating the next generation of physicians is a key means of communicating and disseminating impactful immunologic scientific knowledge, and its practical application to human disease. We present our perspective, using as our model a first-year medical school course entitled Host Defense. As the name suggests, immunology is the overarching principle that links the multiple subjects in the course. We address a range of immunologically relevant topics, including innate and adaptive immunity, vaccines, inflammation, allergy, tumor immunotherapy, transplantation, and autoimmunity. These topics are integrated with the fields of infectious diseases, pathology, clinical laboratory testing, and public health, to illustrate how the basic science discoveries in immunology are relevant to clinical practice. The course objectives are not only to deliver “first principles” and molecular mechanisms, but also to connect these principles with the clinical world of diagnosis and therapy. We detail the different methodologies used to achieve these objectives and to reach today's medical students. This provides a framework for course structure and execution designed to engage both the novice and the more “immunologically experienced” learner. The framework includes classical didactic components and personalized instructor access, aligned with current approaches to self-directed learning and using digital media. We also address some of the challenges of assembling a course like Host Defense in the context of an academic medical center with multiple scientific, educational, and clinical missions. This perspective is not meant be proscriptive, but rather to outline our experiences on the strategies tried, while describing their advantages and drawbacks in teaching immunology.

Analysis of Student Perceptions of Just-In-Time Teaching Pedagogy in PharmD Microbiology and Immunology Courses

“…To summarize students' responses from positively-phrased items in the survey, JiTT was beneficial, helped students enhance their knowledge-based skills and JiTT created an interactive active learning environment. This aligns with what was reported earlier that significantly favorable perception of JiTT may have been because JiTT educational experience matched with the evolving needs of millennial learners, which included: interactive learning, self-directed teaching and use of novel digital teaching technological methods (8,21). Statistical analysis showed significantly favorable overall perception of JiTT when Integrated Immunology courses were compared.…”

“…This is consistent with what was observed earlier that JiTT augmented learning of key points, increased learner participation, and enhanced learner retention of core concepts (7,19,20). Student-centered active learning pedagogies implemented into integrated basic science curricula facilitate student engagement during in-class discussions and help students understand, retain and apply basic science concepts to clinical practice (19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24).…”

“…JiTT pedagogy was well-received by students enrolled into Immunology course and students perceived JiTT to be especially beneficial during problem-solving of the case studies (19,20). The latter is very important because when it comes to health care professional courses like Immunology or Infectious Diseases, it is easier for students to recall basic science concepts as applicable to problem scenarios or clinical cases (21,22). Hence, a sound knowledge of basic science concepts and recalling of the concepts is essential to initiate a thought-provoking discussion and problem-solving of clinical case studies; in this regard, JiTT pedagogical approach implemented for undergraduate Immunology course has been perceived to be beneficial (19,20).…”

The Future of Infectious Diseases Education

“…Immunology education has historically been tightly linked to ID, but with advancements in this field (e.g., cancer immunotherapies, inflammatory syndromes, and autoimmune diseases) its importance in several clinical specialties goes beyond protective immunity [9]. Therefore, educating the next generation of physicians in the field of ID would have an enormous impact on the application of new scientific knowledge to human diseases in various fields [10].…”

“…Increasing demands on faculty time, expanding class sizes and curricula, and a desire to increase accessibility while ensuring affordability threatens innovation in health education [21]. To these drawbacks, we should add e-learning's perceived usefulness, and in some cases ease of utilization (compared with widely used platforms such as Google) [10].…”