Dr. Stephen Messer, SCNM Professor and Chair of Homeopathic Medicine, was invited and presented at the 65th LIGA International Homeopathic Congress held May 17 – 22, 2010 in Redondo Beach, Calif. The LIGA Medicorum Homeopathica is an international homeopathic society of physicians founded in Rotterdam in 1925 with the goal of developing homeopathy worldwide. This year’s conference celebrated the 200th anniversary of Samuel Hahnemann’s Organon of Medicine, the text that launched the practice of homeopathy as a therapeutic method. Additionally, this is the first time the annual LIGA congress has been held in the United States since 1986. Homeopathic practitioners from around the world attended the conference including doctors from Europe, India, Asia, Australia, and South America.

“It is an honor to be invited to speak at the LIGA,” stated Dr. Messer who was one of only two naturopathic physicians who spoke at this year's conference.

Dr. Messer’s talk was significant in that it was the only lecture at the convention that discussed the pedagogy of homeopathic medical education. Dr. Messer highlighted the Southwest College model that utilizes a combination of lecture based didactic courses, case-based learning, and real-patient experiential learning in the clinical setting to train naturopathic students in the art and practice of homeopathy. He discussed how the SCNM homeopathy department has integrated the latest medical education research into its teaching model including online interactive forums, Irby’s model of the One Minute Preceptor: 5 Skills for One-on-One Teaching, and many heuristic tools such as process based flow charts, algorithms, checklists and charting templates. 

Dr. Messer highlighted the importance of what he called “affective arousal” on increasing the effectiveness of learning.

“Students learn far more effectively when they have real-life, clinical interactions with patients for whom they assume responsibility and care for long-term. In other words, when medical students have a human, emotional connection with their patients, they learn on a deeper level than if they encounter the same concepts from a textbook or a lecture. This is not simply my experience as a medical educator, it is supported by the medical education literature.”

In addition, Dr. Messer discussed an important paper published in 2009 in Advances in Physiology Education by Stephen DiCarlo, PhD called “Too much content, not enough thinking, and too little FUN!”

Dr. Messer discussed a new trend in medical education moving towards an active learning model in the classroom called “Team Based Learning”. He suggested that research is showing that this model may be a more effective method of didactic learning than a traditional lecture where a professor talks at bored students who are checked out from the learning experience. Education research shows that students retain only about 10% of information learned in the old-fashioned lecture format. Team Based Learning is a model that the SCNM homeopathy department, along with others at SCNM, plans to develop in the near future to continue to improve its education delivery.

Dr. Messer completed his talk by sharing results from a recent survey of SCNM graduates who focused their education on homeopathy. He discussed graduate’s rates of success in clinical practice and the feedback they gave on the most effective parts of their education. In the end, the message was that SCNM’s homeopathy department has developed a very effective method of teaching based on process-based learning. In SCNM’s Homeopathy Department, students learn longitudinally over time through the experiential process as opposed to the old fashioned models where professors only talk at students as if they are supposed to be funnels receiving the information poured into them.

Ultimately, Dr. Messer humbly said that his measure of success is based on his students’ high rates of success in clinical practice.

“It was an honor to share my teaching experiences at the LIGA conference with the international homeopathic community. The talk was very well received and invited stimulated enthusiastic comments and questions from homeopathic educators from the US, Canada, Europe, Malaysia, and India.”