Clinical diagnostics is a fundamental course required for clinical medical students and serves as a prerequisite for several advanced clinical subjects. However, recent observations indicate a decline in interest among eight-year clinical medicine students at Peking Union Medical College regarding clinical diagnostics courses. Instead, these students seem to prioritize the publication of high-impact articles and involvement in scientific research over their medical coursework, leading to a lack of sufficient attention to clinical diagnostics. In the clinical diagnostics course conducted in the first half of 2024, our objective was to engage medical students by presenting the subject matter in an interesting and relevant manner. We curated textual information regarding the health condition of Lin Daiyu, the protagonist from the Chinese literary classic "The Dream of the Red Chamber," and encouraged students to deduce potential diseases she may have experienced based on the original text. Additionally, we sourced historical photographs of Empress Dowager Cixi from the Qing Dynasty, which facilitated the hypothesis that she likely suffered from goiter. These images were employed as a practical examination question during the mid-semester assessment to evaluate the students' proficiency in conducting neck physical examinations. Furthermore, we shared an inspiring anecdote about healthcare professionals who repurposed potato chip packaging into stethoscopes during the COVID-19 pandemic, underscoring the critical role of physical diagnosis and examination in urgent situations. Following the mid-term exam in clinical diagnosis, a questionnaire survey was administered to the medical students who participated in the examination. The results indicated that 93% of the students found the question regarding Lin Daiyu to be highly engaging, while 89% found the question about Empress Dowager Cixi equally captivating. These innovative teaching strategies significantly enhanced the medical students' enthusiasm for learning clinical diagnostics.
Keywords: clinical diagnostics; historical documents; old historical photos; real cases; traditional chinese cultural classics.
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