Teaching on the Fly: A Needs Assessment for an Ambulatory Resident-as-Teacher Workshop

Residents play an important role in medical education, yet often feel unprepared without formal training. Teaching in the ambulatory setting raises unique challenges such as the difficulty of educating in a limited amount of time. We designed a brief, focused intervention as an initial needs assessment for a residents-as-teachers program in an ambulatory setting to address these concerns.

A 1-day, 2.5-hour workshop was designed focusing on microskills, providing feedback, and ways to address common barriers in ambulatory teaching. Pre- and post-intervention surveys were conducted with both residents and medical students to assess the effects of the workshop on resident teaching in the clinic.

Although post-intervention surveys showed increased resident confidence and self-reported teaching behaviors, medical student surveys did not clearly demonstrate an increase in teaching behaviors. Didactic teaching on feedback and microskills with follow-on role playing were seen as the most helpful parts of the intervention.

Self-assessment alone is an inadequate measure of effectiveness of our teaching intervention. While medical student data can help verify resident self-report, future iterations of our intervention should incorporate objective, third-party evaluation of teaching skill implementation.