Impact of a Longitudinal Resident-as-Teacher Curriculum on Objective Measures of Teaching

Resident-as-teacher (RaT) curricula are often time-limited experiences without opportunities to practice real-world teaching. We implemented a longitudinal RaT programme with self-study resources and opportunities for residents to engage in real-world teaching experiences.

We incorporated RaT curricula guidelines and grounded the programme in the theories of experiential learning and deliberate practice. We asked medical students and interns to evaluate residents' teaching skills using the teaching effectiveness instrument (TEI) on a monthly basis. We fit a repeated measures mixed linear model adjusting for residents' year of training to compare TEI scores over time for residents in the RaT programme and residents who were not enrolled. We stratified residents by year of training and used a Student's t-test to compare School of Medicine (SOM) evaluations across groups.

Twenty-eight residents took part in the study, 14 in each group. There was no significant increase in TEI scores of RaT residents (increase of 0.38 each quarter; 95% CI -1.41, 2.17; p = 0.42), and the change in TEI scores over time was no different than the comparison group (slope difference 0.26; 95% CI -2.34, 2.85; p = 0.85). PGY3 residents in the RaT group had higher SOM evaluation scores in the 'Effectiveness' and 'Feedback' domains.

RaT enrolment was not associated with a faster rate of change in TEI scores but was associated with higher SOM evaluations for PGY3 residents. The curricular and study design provides an example of how to implement and evaluate a longitudinal RaT programme centred on real-world teaching experiences with objective teaching measures.