Exploring Family Medicine Residents' Experiences Teaching Medical Students

Near-peer teaching offered by residents is common in a medical students' educational career, so preparation of residents for their role as teachers is essential. Understanding resident perspectives on interactions with medical students may provide insight into this near-peer relationship and allow stakeholders to emphasize concepts that add value to this relationship when preparing residents to teach. This study presents the results from an inquiry focusing on a cohort of family medicine residents' experiences with medical students in their role as teachers.

Family medicine residents at a Southeastern US academic medical center participated in one of three focus groups to assess resident perceptions of their role in teaching students and approaches employed. We coded focus group transcripts for themes.

Themes identified from questions on residents' perceptions of teaching role and employed teaching approaches focused on teaching interactions and methods. Six categories of major themes were derived from this qualitative analysis: (1) the learning environment, (2) stimulating learning, (3) supervising, (4) role modeling, (5) collaborating, and (6) transferring knowledge. Trends within these categories include creating a safe environment for clinical reasoning and inquiry, setting expectations, developing clinical reasoning skills through practical application of knowledge, providing appropriate student supervision and autonomy, and including students as part of the team.

Residents adopted a variety of teaching approaches that assist medical students in their transition into and ability to function within a clinical environment. Findings from this study have implications for program directors and educators when preparing residents as teachers.