Dr. Yellin Contributes to New Book on Medical Education

We are pleased to announce the publication this week of Remediation in Medical Education: A Mid-Course Correction, featuring a chapter by Dr. Paul Yellin on "Learning Differences and Medical Education."

As many of our readers are aware, Dr. Yellin works regularly with medical students and other young adults in professional and graduate schools, helping them to deal with newly discovered or long-standing academic challenges to their academic success. In his chapter, he describes the wide range of normal variation in how medical students learn, describing both "learning variations" and "learning disabilities." He discusses various aspects of learning, which he calls "constructs" -- memory, attention, language, temporal-sequential ordering, spatial ordering, and higher order cognition -- and how difficulties in any of these constructs can impact academic success in light of the demands of medical training. He goes on to discuss the legal implications of a disability of learning and to offer strategies and resources for both medical students who struggle and their instructors.

Remediation in Medical Education edited by Adina Kalet, MD, MPH and Calvin Chou, MD, PhD (Springer, 2014), covers a wide range of issues relating to medical education, from how medical schools can provide remediation for struggling students, to how cultural issues can impede effective communication, to medical students with underlying disorders, such as autism spectrum disorders, that affect their interpersonal interactions. Both editors have worked extensively in the field of medical education and effective communication between physicians and patients.