OME Introduces "Commemorative Hat Day" to Increase Attendance at Wrap-up
Citing a record slump in attendance, the Office of Medical Education announced that it be giving away commemorative hats to the first 25 students at the next M2 case wrap-up.
Case wrap-up was originally meant as a way to summarize and bring together the ideas and learning issues brought up during the week's problem based learning (PBL) case. Efforts are made to have the actual patient arrive to discuss matters from their point of view. As years have passed since most of the cases were written, the number of actual patients arriving has drastically decreased while the number of testable questions drawn from the case wrap-up has remained at zero.
Dr. Hosokawa commented "We're just not getting the same sort of excitement about the wrap-ups that we used to. It used to be an interesting little break for the students to appreciate medicine holistically. People would come and get to hear the patient's side of the case. These days, however, people seem more interested in wings and beer than case wrap-ups."
For a few years the OME has maintained a policy of blind threats to get students, especially M2's, to come to the wrap-ups. During the last wrap-up M2 President Chris Hempel addressed the issue over a plate of BYFO's at CJ's. "Yeah, they kept telling us that they would have questions from the wrap-ups on the test. Unless someone read Harrison's aloud for their wrap-up, I don't think we've ever been tested over the stuff. I hear the M1's are still going to theirs. I guess they didn't get the memo."
The OME, realizing that this is the prevailing attitude, has decided to take a page out of the Major League Baseball[i] handbook and have special promotion days. "We will be giving away this lovely 8th anniversary PBL baseball cap to the first 25 students at the wrap-up," said Dr. McCallum. "Every few weeks we'll have a different promotion. As people seem to be going to pubs during case wrap-up, I'm trying to pull together 'Wings and Beer Wrap-up'. Sure it might be a little disrespectful to the patients, but then again how often to they show-up anyway?"
Mr. Hempel was asked for his opinion on the new plan. "If they combine it with the Club Vogue free lunch buffet, you can count me in."
"This sort of ploy works rather universally. I heard that the KC Royals have nearly doubled their attendance on 'autographed ball night'. That's seventy-five people that would have otherwise not gone to Kaufman Stadium." Dr. Hosokawa went on to say that "I really can't think of anything that will get the medical students more excited about case wrap-up than 'Have the Block Director Mow Your Lawn Day'. That is, of course, unless Mr. Hempel gets his way."
Commemorative Hat Day is scheduled for the first wrap-up after the Thanksgiving break, followed by Autographed Speculum Day and KC Royals Rectal Exam Day. "As we modeled our promotions idea off the Royals, they were kind enough to offer us season tickets. I explained to them that we were trying to encourage people to come to the wrap-ups so I offered the DRE idea. Most of the Royals are really young players that need the exposure anyway."
With any luck this series of promotions will succeed in increasing attendance at these long-ignored lectures. Dr. Hosokawa said in closing that "if this doesn't work we may institute Plan B, which involved torturing a chimpanzee until 45 students show up."