Using the Microskill Teaching Strategy in Difficult Teaching Situations

Reba Rambler: This learner type has difficulty focusing on pertinent patient issues and diagnoses. The catch phrase is. . ."Can't see the forest for the trees."

Harold Hasty: This learner type has a pattern of making a hasty conclusion without gathering enough evidence or considering other possibilities.

Abby Absolutist: This learner type has learned medicine by copying an attending in an apprenticeship-type fashion, without knowing or discovering the background and evidence for diagnostic and treatment decisions.

Debbie Demoralized: This learner type is often filled with self-doubt issuing from experiences in which patients have bad outcomes (related or unrelated to the medical learner's actions), where the attending physicians may berate them inappropriately, and where they have received little feedback, whether positive or negative, leaving them wondering if they are fit for their duties.

Al Arrogant: This type of learner may behave with impertinence toward a subject for which they feel discomfort and for which they may have knowledge deficits.