Rachel Katz, MD, a third-year resident in the Yale Department of Psychiatry, is co-author of a paper that promotes the use of medical case reports as tools to teach medical students.
The paper, published in the journal Academic Medicine, includes comments from three medical students – including Katz – about their experiences participating in a case reporting program at a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital.
Physicians use case reports to provide details about a patient’s condition, including their symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment recommendations.
In the paper, the authors propose five educational benefits of case reporting: observation and pattern recognition skills; hypothesis-generating skills; understanding of patient-centered care; rhetorical versatility; and use of the case report as a rapidly publishable “mini-thesis,” which could fulfill MD thesis or scholarly concentration requirements.
The paper’s first author, Clifford D. Packer, MD, associate professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, asked three former students to comment on how they chose and researched the patient case reports they were required to write while training with him at the VA.
Through the guidance of my mentor, I learned skills in journal selection to optimize both the likelihood of publication and journal relevance.
Rachel Katz, MD, third-year resident, Yale Department of Psychiatry
Katz, who completed her medical degree at Case Western, wrote her case report about the neurologic effects of lithium toxicity. In the Academic Medicine article, she explained that she had to write “an illustrative, easy-to-follow story that included pertinent details of the patient’s presentation as it unfolded.” She said revising the report required her to eliminate unnecessary information and identify potential weaknesses in her arguments.
“Through the guidance of my mentor, I learned skills in journal selection to optimize both the likelihood of publication and journal relevance,” she wrote. “I also developed a strategy for replying to editors’ comments.”
Her case report was her first publication in an academic journal. “The excitement of acceptance and official publication fueled a fire for further academic writing,” she wrote. “It strengthened my residency application and ability to connect with potential mentors.”