Skin-Test Prediction as a Teaching Aid:  A Preliminary Report of Test Predictability in Medical Students

Although undergraduate instruction in allergy has been relatively neglected in many medical schools¹ despite the frequency of allergic disease, there has been a trend towards an increase in the time devoted to this subject in the medical curriculum in recent years. This trend demands a search for new and better pedagogic methods in allergy teaching. The use of medical students as subjects for both demonstration and practice of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures has long been common usage in medical education, and in certain allergy clinics students learn and perfect their technique of skin testing in and upon the epidermis of their peers.

In our experience this teaching exercise had met with but variable enthusiasm. We have therefore attempted during the past five years to add to it an element of dramatic suspense and ego-involvement by venturing to predict the results of the forthcoming tests for each individual student. Such