Introduction: Medical students receive insufficient training in musculoskeletal diagnosis and management. To address this deficiency, a senior medical student at our institution designed and moderated small-group interactive discussions with third-year medical students on acute fracture management during their family medicine clerkship.
Methods: In these sessions, students learned how to diagnose and comprehensively work up a case of a suspected fracture, how to effectively communicate findings from physical exam and X-ray, and when to appropriately consult a surgeon for treatment.
Results: This module was piloted with a total of 14 students in two separate small groups. One hundred percent of students regarded the module as very useful, and there was a 50% improvement in pre- versus posteducational assessment.
Discussion: Our experience suggests that students can quickly improve clinical skills for fracture management in a focused smallgroup interactive session. In addition, these sessions can be effectively designed and implemented by senior medical students. This module may be used with either clinical or preclinical students, but we believe that this information would be best received by clinical students on family medicine, emergency medicine, or orthopedic rotations.
Keywords: Bone; Case-Based Learning; Fractures; Musculoskeletal; Trauma; Wounds and Injuries.