Teaching the Learner to Teach: An Effective and Reproducible Curriculum to Engage Junior Residents as Educators

BackgroundJunior residents are not uniformly prepared for, trained in, or comfortable with their roles as teachers. There are few feasible and reproducible published curricula to address that gap and no such curriculum that targets the specific needs of junior surgical residents. We designed and implemented a course for junior residents-as-teachers with the aim of studying the impact on residents' comfort, confidence, perceptions, and behaviors as well as proving the feasibility and reproducibility of the curriculum.MethodsUsing Kern's model of curriculum development, we designed and implemented a didactic and workshop-based course. The curriculum content focused on the learning climate, expectation setting, teaching, and giving feedback. The course was offered to PGY-1 and PGY-2 general surgery residents at a university-based program over two separate years. The course was evaluated with a retrospective pre/post-survey assessing change in self-reported comfort, confidence, perceptions, and behaviors. Improvement was analyzed using a student's t-test (1-sided, P < 0.05 as significant).ResultsThe course had >90% participation (26 of 30 residents). Statistically significant increases (P < 0.01) were seen in self-reported comfort, confidence, and time spent on expectation setting, teaching, giving feedback, and role-modeling. After the curriculum, participants believed to a greater extent (P = 0.01) that being a skilled teacher as a resident is important. All respondents supported offering the course to future trainees.DiscussionThis junior residents-as-teachers course significantly improved self-reported comfort, confidence, and time spent on teaching activities. The course was feasible even within the constraints of a surgical-training program and was proven reproducible through a second pilot.