Docents' and students' perceptions of the ideal and actual role of the docent

In the study reported here, the authors investigated the perceptions of medical students and faculty mentors, called docents, regarding the docents' role. A total of 197 students and 22 docents responded to a questionnaire asking them to rate 32 docent activities on a 4-point scale where 1 = seldom done and 4 = very often done. They were requested to rate these activities on the basis of how often they would be carried out by a docent ideally and on the basis of how often in their experience they were actually carried out. Mean ratings of ideal and actual practice were calculated for each activity as perceived by the docents and by the students. Rank-order correlations were computed to compare the docents' and students' perceptions. Although both the docents and the students consistently felt that more time should be devoted to each activity than actually was, the rank-order correlation between the docents' rating of the ideal and actual practice was .87, and between the students' ratings of ideal and actual it was .93. Both the docents and the students perceived the docents as actually carrying out their essential role-modeling, teaching, and patient-care functions.