Clinical teaching: maintaining an educational role for doctors in the new health care environment

Good clinical teaching is central to medical education but there is concern about maintaining this in contemporary, pressured health care environments. This paper aims to demonstrate that good clinical practice is at the heart of good clinical teaching.

Seven roles are used as a framework for analysing good clinical teaching. The roles are medical expert, communicator, collaborator, manager, advocate, scholar and professional.

The analysis of clinical teaching and clinical practice demonstrates that they are closely linked. As experts, clinical teachers are involved in research, information retrieval and sharing of knowledge or teaching. Good communication with trainees, patients and colleagues defines teaching excellence. Clinicians can 'teach' collaboration by acting as role models and by encouraging learners to understand the responsibilities of other health professionals. As managers, clinicians can apply their skills to the effective management of learning resources. Similarly skills as advocates at the individual, community and population level can be passed on in educational encounters. The clinicians' responsibilities as scholars are most readily applied to teaching activities. Clinicians have clear roles in taking scholarly approaches to their practice and demonstrating them to others.

Good clinical teaching is concerned with providing role models for good practice, making good practice visible and explaining it to trainees. This is the very basis of clinicians as professionals, the seventh role, and should be the foundation for the further development of clinicians as excellent clinical teachers.