Promoting collaborative teaching in clinical education

Although the practice of medicine is increasingly a multidisciplinary effort, clinical teaching of medical students is accomplished primarily within a departmental structure.

The purpose of this study was to identify subject matter within the clinical curriculum that could serve as focus for multidisciplinary teaching.

A questionnaire was sent to 13 clerkship directors (representing required clerkships) at a large Midwestern medical school in which they were asked to rate a list of 631 patient problems as critical (primary), important (secondary), or "nice to know," relevant to their respective clerkship objectives.

All clerkship directors completed the questionnaire. There were 523 items that were considered primary, and over 90% of these items were listed as either primary or secondary in more than 1 clerkship. Twelve topics were considered primary or secondary by at least 5 clerkship directors. Four clerkship directors identified 43 patient problems, and 3 clerkship directors identified 92 topics as primary or secondary clerkship objectives.

In this study, listing of patient problems across clerkships demonstrated significant overlap of the clinical curriculum, suggesting multiple opportunities for faculty collaboration in clinical education.