Developing the One-Minute Preceptor

Learning from experienced doctors in real clinical settings is very important for medical students. However, the busy and at times unpredictable nature of clinical work means that clinical work must take priority over teaching. What clinicians want is to be able to offer quality learning experiences for students without significant disruption to their clinical work.

In the context of medical education, students are learning in a variety of physical locations. These various locations require different sets of teaching skills. This article describes how as faculty educational developers we worked with clinicians to enhance their role as teachers within busy clinical contexts. More specifically, we will describe how we augmented an established programme of travelling workshops for clinical teachers by incorporating the key principles associated with the development of the One-Minute Preceptor.

We combined classroom training with observation of teaching in the clinical area, and by doing so were more able to translate classroom theory into authentic workplace practice.