Teaching the differential diagnosis of common complaints to medical students

Differential diagnosis of common complaints is a curricular area appropriate for family medicine. Not usually taught in medical school, it is an area in which family medicine faculty are competent and effective teachers. A new component of our sophomore family medicine seminars has been the use of cases that demonstrate problems in the differential diagnosis of common complaints and that illustrate important aspects of family medicine. Students are assigned textbook readings dealing with the differential diagnosis of the common complaint to be reviewed. For each seminar, a simulated patient is given a script dealing with a different common complaint. The student's task is to make the diagnosis and conduct an appropriate interview while being videotaped. We have also introduced a junior selective, "Differential Diagnosis of Common Complaints," that deals with 15 to 20 common complaints, rather than diseases. Both sophomore and junior students have particularly enjoyed the participatory and problem-solving aspects of the newly designed courses.