Residency Insight -- A PRESENT Podiatry eZine

Guest Editorial: Michael Corpuz, podiatric medical student, Western University

Michael Corpuz is a podiatric medical student at Western University in Pomona, CA. He is in the class of 2013 and is one of the students who is helping to blaze the trail at our profession's newest school. In this editorial, Michael shares his insight into some of the new approaches being used in medical education and how their classwork has been integrated with other medical students. I think you will find this editorial to cast a very bright light on the future of our profession and the way we will be educating tomorrow's podiatrists..

—John Steinberg, DPM, PRESENT Editor

The First Podiatry Class at Western U.
Reaching the Tipping Point
by Michael Corpuz

“The levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable … the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.”

I was immediately intrigued by Malcolm Gladwell’s definition of the title of his best-selling work, The Tipping Point, when I read the book one summer ago, months before the first year for the new College of Podiatric Medicine at WesternU officially began. Though the concept is discussed largely in a socioeconomic context in the book, I realized it also perfectly describes a very special time-frame during this first chapter of my own medical education. This series of incredible experiences reminded my classmates and I, the Inaugural Class, that we were on the right track.

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To say that this first year of school was challenging would be an immense understatement. Everyone immediately recognized that we were no longer playing in a summer church rec-center. This was the Big League. We were under a shared curriculum with other medical programs (DO, DMD, OD), and thus took every basic course with them: Gross Anatomy, Head & Neck, Molecular and Cellular Basis of Medicine, Disease / Immunity and Therapeutics, Blood & Lymphatics, Musculoskeletal, Behavioral Medicine & Psychiatry, and Neuroscience. Add to that the Essentials of Clinical Medicine and our own Podiatric Medicine Practice (PMP) courses, and it was enough to cause vivid nightmares in every new student all year round.

Everyone had their share of struggles, some more serious than others. But we experienced the majority of our growing pains with the PMP program. The course fully implemented a unique style of learning throughout the year and definitely added to the adjustment process. All of our other courses were taught in the traditional lecture-presenter format. We were comfortable with this format. It was safe and familar.

Out of our Comfort Zone

But the PMP course put us out of our comfort zone. Gone were the traditional PowerPoint files, handouts, notes, and continuous hours of lectures that our generation of students was accustomed to. In its place were dynamic, faculty-led group meetings, filled with various cases and vignettes that put our problem-based-learning skills to the test. Indeed, the assessments were stringent. The examinations, quite difficult.

Most students longed for a change to this approach. Our faculty had always been very flexible and open to new ideas, willing to go out of their way to accommodate and compromise with us on any pertinent issues. Nevertheless, with this particular matter, they simply reassured us to stay the course and that everything would come together soon.

Little did we know that the moment was coming sooner rather than later.

The Podiatry Class Shined

It started with a new case we had during our IPE (InterProfessional Education) course. The session was entitled “Rheum to Roam,” and students from nine different WesternU health disciplines came together to discuss it. When this three-hour forum all about rheumatoid arthritis came to an end, the whispers among colleagues quickly spread: the DPM class of 2013 knew their stuff and shined the brightest. Maybe it was the group-meeting setting that we were already used to from our PMP course. Maybe it was the fact that our class had been specially trained to actually discuss the cases and rely on critical thinking and analysis rather than strict memorization and regurgitation. Maybe this novel, problem-based learning approach was one of the most effective ways to learn, we thought.

In the next week, with our chests puffed out a bit more and our heads held a little higher, a group of us volunteered at the Chinatown Senior Citizen Service Center in downtown Los Angeles. We were paired with teams from the DO Class of 2013 to provide routine physicals for walk-in patients and to attempt to address any of their chief complaints. Not surprisingly, every patient presented with some type of foot problem, from common hammertoe contractures to severe bunions to fungal infections. Once again, it became readily apparent that our faculty had trained us exceptionally well. We recognized and explained the etiology, biomechanics, and treatment options (conservative and surgical) for every finding with ease. More importantly, we were able to effectively communicate all this information to our patients. The supervising physicians were highly impressed. They let us know that whatever methods our faculty was using to prepare us this well, it sure was working.

Brimming with even more confidence and a newfound swagger, we entered the final phase of our PMP course and prepared for the oral final examinations, proctored by local practicing podiatrists. What once seemed like an insurmountable amount of detail and difficult concepts when the year began, was now a workable set of lessons and notes that we were already all too familiar and comfortable with. And indeed, the results did not lie, as we excelled in a testing simulation that resembled Board-exam style questioning rather than the typical Scantron setting.

In a span of about three weeks, whatever lingering doubts we had were quickly dissipated. Our podiatry course pushed us hard and put us to the challenge in the classroom setting all year long with this new style of learning, and as a result, our class was absolutely amazing outside of it.

We have only completed Year One, but now the momentum for further growth and development as aspiring doctors is unstoppable. I will always look back on this particular sequence of events during our first year and know that it was a strong push towards becoming successful podiatrists.

It was a testament to our faculty’s pedagogic prowess. It was further fuel for our passionate fires for learning. It was our much-needed confidence builder.

It was our tipping point.

Learn more about Western University in Pomona, CA.

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