This article is the first in a new interview series launched by Melissa Shew, Associate Director of Teaching Excellence, and Jennifer Maney, Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, focused on a wide range of educators in the market.
This interview series, hosted through CTL, pays special attention to education as a profession and mission in the marketplace. All types of lecturers and faculty will be featured.
If you would like to nominate yourself or someone you know for a profile in this series, please send an email with their name to Shew or by email. ctl@marquette.edu Subject: CTL Spotlight Series. Please enter a brief description of the person (you or someone else). After review, CTL will work with the individual or team of educators to respond.
Dr. Daniel Pinto, PT, DPT, PhD, OCS, FAAOMPT
Assistant Professor, Department of Physical Therapy
Behavior, Engagement, and Technology Assessment (BETA) Lab
Faculty of Health Sciences
I have been teaching at Marquette since fall 2017.
What do you find rewarding about teaching?
When students tell me after completing my class that they were able to help a family member with a diagnosis and direct them to appropriate medical services.
If we have information to help families navigate the health care system, we can do the same for patients.
What do you find difficult about teaching?
I teach in professional training programs and teach courses that focus on clinical decision making under conditions of uncertainty. This course is one of the first courses that only comes in gray. Nothing is black or white. A person’s health complaints refer to a variety of possible conditions with varying probabilities. As we learn more about health complaints from patients, the probabilities associated with different conditions change. It is our job to match the patient’s symptoms to the most likely condition.
I teach my students how to navigate these complex situations to best diagnose and assist patients in real time.
The information we collect from individuals can indicate conditions that require urgent medical management. It can be a matter of life or death for the patient. At the end of clinical practice, physicians must make informed medical choices based on limited information. This is very difficult for beginners who often seek certainty.
My challenge is to facilitate engagement with this difficult learning challenge by bringing often uncertain real-world scenarios into the classroom.
I emphasize to my students the importance of screening for medical referrals and how much information can be gleaned from a short interview and examination. For example, a few years ago I called a friend who was slurring his speech on the phone, and it was a first for him. When I asked him what had changed recently, he told me that his family had been sick with the flu, and that he only got sick the day before. I asked if she had noticed any other changes. He noted that he felt weak: “I was so tired I could barely turn the steering wheel of my car!” When I encouraged him to look in the mirror and smile, he reported that he noticed that his smile “looked a little different.” Recalling that, he noticed that he sometimes had difficulty focusing his eyes and had a slight loss of sensation in his hands. He also realized that he had dropped his cell phone. He believed these changes were due to being “hit hard” by the flu. In fact, his wife had been in bed for several days with the flu, but she felt she was doing better in comparison. He saw a doctor the day his symptoms started and was treated for the flu.
Just hearing his story made me wonder about a completely different cause of his symptoms. If it’s the flu, it’s definitely weird. He reported decreased sensation, decreased control of multiple muscle groups, and visual impairment. I felt that he was likely suffering from a stroke, even though he was still middle-aged and had seen his doctor the day before with those exact symptoms. I suggested that he go to the emergency room for further testing. Although he was reluctant, he took my advice and a few hours later was diagnosed with a stroke at the hospital. He wasn’t 100% sure he was having a stroke, but he needed to act on the information available.
Understanding what information indicates the need for a medical referral and the urgency of the referral decision is a central topic in my classes.
What do you hope students will take away from your teaching?
Being curious is the key to understanding your patients. Most conditions follow a logical story. In order to meet people’s needs, it helps to have a genuine interest in people and their stories. If there are gaps in your story, fill them in. If the pieces of your story or puzzle don’t fit together, wonder why. Do not force the pieces to fit together. Be methodical when necessary and take strategic shortcuts when possible.
What advice would you give someone who wants to pursue a teaching career in your field?
Healthcare specialty programs hire people who have built their expertise in clinical practice and those who have built their expertise in research.
They are often given courses to teach to suit their skill set, but receive little training in how to teach or learn.
My advice to physical therapists and other teaching-seeking clinicians is to seek the help of a teaching professional to improve your teaching. In fact, I don’t think anyone would do what I did, which is to try to fine-tune a once-a-year taught course without the help of an instructor like the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL). It is recommended. Although we have worked hard to create an interactive educational environment and a variety of assessment methods, we have been less aware of the need for strategic communication with students. Managing classroom expectations and social norms was something I had never considered. If I hadn’t reached out to Melissa Shew at CTL, I’m sure I would have spent several more years fine-tuning the content without seeing any significant improvement in the educational experience for myself or my learners.
AMAZING TEACHING TIP TIME! Share one of your favorite things you do in class or with your students. I think everyone should try it. Limit yourself to three sentences.
Those using group work are advised to be cautious about forming groups, as suggested by the use of team-based learning approaches. I create purposeful groups based on criteria I share with students: a combination of past performance in prerequisite courses, research on decision-making tendencies, and how students want to receive information. Create a. I share with my students that all groups are equally balanced and bring diverse skill sets to group learning. This helps with learning within and between groups.
If you would like to nominate someone you know (or yourself) to be profiled in this series, please email ctl@marquette.edu. Please enter a very brief description of the educator and/or why you think they should be highlighted. After review, CTL will contact the candidate to begin the interview process. During this process, educators briefly answer a variety of interview questions in writing from a menu of options.
