Storytelling should not be considered solely a teaching tool used in the clinical sciences. In many ways, the narrative of the story allows students to hear others “thinking out loud.” For example, the story of AIDS would begin with an understanding of the peculiarities of initial symptoms caused by the disease followed by a discussion of what led researchers to suspect a virus as the root cause. A paramount lesson from the narrative is comprehending what leads researchers or clinicians to ask certain questions or make certain hypotheses concerning a disease. By providing a narrative account, a storyline forces students to better understand the circumstances that lead to drug discoveries, obstacles to treatment, and advantages and disadvantages of specific therapeutic options. The story of a disease helps learners understand circumstances surrounding recognition of an altered health state and the chronological events that shape the pharmacotherapy used to treat or cure. Telling the story of a disease, disease state, or any lesson on a micro or macro level may be invaluable to students. The effective use of storytelling as a component of teaching may be too often overlooked. For most of us, our education started informally through fairy tales, fables, and even family stories. Perhaps the greatest strength of storytelling is the naturalness of this mode of information transmission. Moreover, information that is presented in a logical and systematic fashion is often easier for students to understand, process, retrieve, and synthesize. Stories are a connected means of presenting and transmitting information. Have we as teachers forgotten the importance of storytelling? Some speculate that growing demands to teach more to more students alongside the overreliance on PowerPoint presentations and other technologies have led many educators to stray from telling the larger story. While neurology is not my field of expertise, I found myself drawn into the book and the story, and I learned a lot. In the course of the book, the author reveals that he was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s. The nonfiction work is narrated by a journalist who tells the story of Parkinson’s disease, from James Parkinson’s first reported observations of a movement disorder titled “An Essay on the Shaking Palsy,” through modern day start-up companies and their explorations of misfolded proteins as a root cause for the disease. The novel Brain Storms was intended to serve as a “launch pad” for a boot camp series envisioned to prepare students for a new PharmD curriculum. Potts and Davis described outstanding teachers as those who “make things stick.” 3 The question then becomes what makes the things we teach sticky or stickier? In preparation for instructing a new module called “Transitions in Pharmacy” at our college, I was asked to read a book that was a component of a summer reading assignment for incoming first professional year doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) students. Researchers have ventured into scholarship in this area to best define what separates “good ones” from “not so good ones.” 1,2 Is it that they care more? Are good teachers more entertaining or more prepared? Is it their sense of humor or the fact that they challenge on a different level? Educators and administrators alike can spend a lifetime trying to define great teaching and great teachers.
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