We’re excited to announce the first set of videos for our new Clinical Sciences library is live on Osmosis! Keep reading to learn why we’re so excited about this series and how you can incorporate it into your studies.
What’s the new Osmosis Clinical Sciences library?
The Osmosis Clinical Sciences library helps prepare you for the clinical management of patients by watching the videos we all know and love that guide you through clinical decision-making trees and completing paired board-style assessment items. These Learn pages are aligned to core clerkship curricula and made by experts in each specialty (including active clerkship directors for curriculum design and content review), so you can be confident you’re watching what you need to know to succeed on your rotations and exams. Everyone at Osmosis is passionate about making learning simple and enjoyable, so we made sure that this series is approachable for a first-time clinical learner.
We hope that the new Clinical Sciences library will help you start thinking clinically from day one to patient one and beyond!
What types of Clinical Sciences topics will I see?
You will see three main video types in this series:1. Approach to Presentation
In these videos, we guide you through the acute management of a patient with a specific presentation, such as a symptom (e.g., dyspnea), sign (e.g., jaundice), laboratory finding (e.g., hyponatremia), or suspected disease category (e.g., congenital heart defects). After discussing the differential diagnosis, we guide you through the clinical reasoning to the appropriate diagnosis using the history, physical examination, and diagnostic investigations.2. Approach to Disease
In these videos, we review the basic definition and pathophysiology of the disease as well as the acute management, history and physical examination findings, and diagnostic investigations. Then we guide you through patient management. 3. Health Promotion and Preventative Health
Topics coming soon (e.g., Cardiovascular disease screening: Clinical sciences)
How will the Clinical Sciences series help me in my studies?
While on rotations, you’re doing everything from caring for patients to attending lectures and simulations while balancing studying for shelf exams and boards. We want to help you feel more confident and succeed in your rotations and exams through three different types of Clinical Sciences content: 1. Decision-making trees: These are clinical algorithms based on the latest evidence-based clinical guidelines but at the right level for a student on their clinical rotations. Use these as a quick and easy-to-follow review or refresher. Seeing a patient in the clinic or on the wards and need to present to the resident/fellow/attending? Take a quick look at the decision-making tree on your Osmosis mobile app to help guide your history, physical examination, differential diagnoses, and next steps in management. Need a quick refresher before your exam? Review high-yield concepts in an organized way.
2. Videos: These are the enjoyable videos you know and love from Osmosis, but now they guide you through the clinical decision-making trees. Take your understanding another step further with additional explanation at each point of the decision-making tree, and learn more Clinical Pearls and High Yield Facts. Watch a video on your mobile app while commuting and between patients to prepare for rounds the next day, or watch at home to prepare for rotations and exams.
3. Board-style assessment items: Reinforce your learning and/or prepare for the Shelf, USMLE® Step 2, COMLEX-USA® Level 2, or PANCE® exam using assessment items aligned to each video.
Where can I find the Clinical Sciences library on Osmosis?
You can use search to find any of our new Clinical Sciences topics, but we recommend looking at the library page to find the topics you’re looking for in each specialty (see the purple NEW labels). Since the content is organized to align with the core clerkship curricula, using the library page will help you make sure you don’t miss any important topics!
You can easily revisit relevant basic sciences concepts by clicking on Prerequisite basic sciences section to refresh your knowledge ahead of rotations:
Or start your clinical learning by clicking on our NEW Clinical Sciences modules:
I can only see NEW labels on Internal Medicine and Surgery so far. When is more Clinical Sciences content coming?
We’re so glad you asked! We hope you’re enjoying the series so far! Here is the timeline below for the rest of the planned Clinical Sciences library launches:
How is the Clinical Sciences library different from other Learn pages on Osmosis.org? How does everything fit together?
Osmosis uses the principles of learning science to make learning more approachable and enjoyable for learners. A big part of this is segmenting our videos into smaller units, or “chunks,” so you can continuously build on your knowledge. You could start by learning the fundamental concepts in anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, etc., then bring these concepts together with Pathology Review videos as you understand complex disease processes. Then, build your understanding further as you move into clinical rotations and learn the clinical diagnosis and management of patients. If you’re in your rotations, you may even want to revisit those basic sciences concepts before diving into the Clinical Sciences Library.
Let’s look at an example using pneumonia:
When you think about it, pneumonia is a HUGE topic! If we made a single video on pneumonia with absolutely everything you needed to know, it would be as long as a full-length movie! If we started to break it down, here are some examples of the basic sciences concepts you would need to better understand this condition:
Now that we understand the fundamentals let’s discuss how to think clinically about diagnosing and managing a patient with suspected pneumonia with our new Clinical Sciences learn pages:
We know that medicine isn’t that straightforward! There are many ways patients could present, and we need to use our understanding of several disease processes to determine the most likely differential diagnosis while ensuring we don’t miss the life-threatening and most common causes. Take dyspnea, for example:
Can you see how utilizing progressively complex Osmosis videos can be so beneficial in making learning more approachable and less overwhelming? Clinical Sciences will allow you to put all of these pieces together to think clinically!
I’m a Physician Assistant (PA) student. Will this series help me in my studies? What else is new for PA?
Our new Clinical Sciences library has been extensively reviewed by expert PA educators, who are thrilled to have this series available for PA students. In fact, one of our experts said it is “perfect” for PA learners! We also have a couple of very exciting updates to announce:
- The Osmosis Library has been reorganized to meet the needs of PA faculty and learners. Our Foundational Sciences section is organized based on the ARC-PA standards and the NCCPA PANCE® blueprint. For the Organ Systems section, the pathophysiology topics are once again organized based on the NCCPA PANCE® blueprint. For the Clinical Rotations section, each specialty includes an End of rotation exam review section organized based on the PAEA end-of-rotation exam topic lists. Finally, the PANCE Review® section brings everything together and is organized based on the NCCPA PANCE® blueprint.
- We are continuing to expand our PANCE® question bank! Each Clinical Sciences learn page will have PANCE® practice questions expertly crafted by PA educators to help you succeed on your exam. These questions are also available in our continuously growing PANCE® question bank aligned to the Medical content categories and Task categories seen in the NCCPA PANCE® blueprint.
I’m a Nurse Practitioner (NP) student. How will this series help me in my studies? What else is new for NP?
Our new Clinical Sciences library is also available for NP students! In addition, we have a very exciting update to announce for our NP platform:
- Our entire platform has been reorganized to meet the needs of NP faculty and learners, including Foundational Sciences and Body Systems sections, as well as a Population Foci section that’s aligned with population foci and NP professional standards where you’ll find the new Clinical Sciences content.
- We are continuing to expand our question bank! Each Clinical Sciences learn page will have practice questions expertly crafted by educators to help you succeed on your NP exams.
Why have the Clinical practice videos been retitled to Clinical (To be retired)? When are they being retired?
If you’ve been an Osmosis member for a while, you may have noticed that we had videos called Clinical Practice. These videos will now say Clinical (To be retired) in the title to indicate that they will be removed and replaced with our new and improved Clinical Sciences content. Videos will not be retired until 2024, and we will give you plenty of notice beforehand!
We’re so excited to replace this series with our Clinical Sciences library because it’s:
- Better organized to help you think clinically.
- More concise.
- More clinically relevant and high-yield.
- More accurate and up-to-date.
We hope you will love this new series as much as we do! Happy learning everyone!
About the Author
Maddison Caterine (MSc, MB, BCh, BAO) is the Senior Director of Medical Education at Osmosis from Elsevier, where she leads curriculum development for our medical products and oversees the subject matter experts that create and review our scripts and assessment items. She joined Osmosis as the Head of Question Writing in 2019 after completing her medical degree at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). Before heading to medical school, she completed her Master’s in Clinical Anatomy at Western University in Canada, where she helped teach undergraduate nursing, physical and occupational therapy, dental, and medical students. This was where she discovered her passion for health professions education and received her Western Certificate for University Teaching and Learning. She then continued to teach Anatomy at the American University of the Caribbean and Ross University School of Medicine. She is currently leading the development of our new Clinical Sciences content to help first-time clinical learners think clinically with decision-making trees, approachable and concise videos, and board-style assessment items. Her other favorite project to date has been the Osmosis Anatomy series!
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