Teaching Clinical Precepting: A Faculty Development Workshop Using Role-Play

Precepting is when a medical educator listens to a learner's presentation and must teach and assess the learner while rendering safe patient care. A popular framework for this type of educational encounter is the one-minute preceptor model, which can work for learners at all skill levels. This workshop was created to develop skills of all teaching faculty, regardless of medical specialty, in precepting.

The workshop is based on Kolb's experiential learning theory. A PowerPoint presentation delivers the core abstract concepts. The PowerPoint allows for discussion of participants' prior precepting experiences, including both challenges and successes. The workshop ends with role-plays for participants to practice their skills and a facilitated debrief to aid individual reflection. Twelve role-plays were created for use in the workshop; these were then reviewed by someone in the matching specialty to enhance authenticity. Participants completed a survey after the workshop to evaluate the session.

This presentation was delivered 26 times to 392 participants at 16 different teaching hospitals. Twenty-one different medical specialties and subspecialties were represented. Ninety-seven percent of participants stated they would use the information presented in the workshop often or daily. There were conflicting comments about the role-plays. The negative comments centered around (a) personal difficulty participating in the role-plays and (b) the role-plays not being related to the learning.

Discussion and role-play can be an effective way to instruct educators in use of the one-minute preceptor as a framework for teaching.