PBL is a big reason why I ended up coming to Pitt. It’s a much more dynamic way to learn and it really prepares you for the boards and research. It’s much more like medicine as we will practice it in the real world. And it’s fun. We just finished Neuroscience and we laughed our way through the whole thing—and we learned a lot of information. The facilitator sets the tone and the group dynamic really makes or breaks the PBL.
I still have a lot of fond memories of my first PBL group. We were together from August until December of first year. That group still hangs out on a regular basis. We have potluck PBL dinners at someone’s apartment and it’s nice to have a sense of continuity from one year to the next.
One time the facilitator took us all to breakfast. There we were presenting all we had learned about uterine dysfunction while people around us were eating. I had Dr. James Shaver who’s the course director for cardiology and he’s famous in these parts for being able to hear heart murmurs better than anyone. It’s funny, because he actually wears hearing aids, but when if it comes to heart murmur he knows them all and he can tell you what to listen for…like one sounds like the word “Kentucky” and another one like “Tennessee.”
