An evidence-based guide to clinical instruction in audiology

A significant portion of the AuD curriculum occurs in clinical settings outside the classroom. Expert clinicians, employed within and outside of the university, are called upon to provide this clinical education. Most have had little or no formal training in clinical teaching yet face pedagogical and logistical challenges when simultaneously providing clinical service and teaching. Training to provide optimal methods and approaches to clinical instruction should be based on research evidence; however, there is a paucity of research in this area within the audiology discipline.

This article provides a review of literature supplying evidence for important concepts, elements, and approaches to the clinical instruction process. Additionally, we provide readers with some practical tools with which to facilitate application of optimal clinical teaching principles.

We conducted a systematic review of literature on clinical education in audiology and across a wide array of health professions. Through the use of content analysis we identified four elements of the clinical teaching process most critical in examining optimal practices.

The elements identified as critical to positive clinical learning outcomes include the establishment of mutual expectations and goals; structured content and delivery of feedback; establishment of a positive instructor/student relationship; and questioning strategies that lead to the development of critical thinking skills.

Many disciplines outside of audiology demonstrate robust research activity related to understanding and optimizing the clinical education process. The application of a number of evidence-based clinical teaching principles should allow us to improve student outcomes in audiology. Researchers in our field might consider if and how we should develop our own research literature in clinical education.