Education Research: Guided Worksheets to Support Residents as Clinical Teachers in the Neurology Clerkship

Neurology residents are often tasked with incorporating impromptu medical student teaching into their clinical workflow, yet few resources exist that combine content and pedagogical guidance in an efficient format. Residents are also learning themselves and may experience anxiety around teaching, compounded by the additional cognitive load of identifying and addressing student learning needs. We developed a guided worksheet tool to make high-yield, effective clinical neurology teaching accessible to busy residents.

We piloted 4 self-guided worksheets on core neurology topics and examined student learning and the resident teaching experience. We aimed to (1) demonstrate successful student knowledge acquisition, retention, and satisfaction and (2) demonstrate improved resident teacher (RT) comfort, efficacy, and/or efficiency in clinical teaching on inpatient services.

Four worksheets were developed: ischemic stroke basics, reading magnetic resonance imaging of the brain, intracranial hemorrhage, and seizures. Residents were asked to guide students through filling out a partially blank version, using a completed 'master' version as a guide, while providing targeted teaching when knowledge gaps were apparent. Student learning was assessed using presession, postsession, and two-week postsession quizzes. Qualitative analysis was performed on semistructured interviews with RTs to understand their experience teaching with the tool.

Six RTs taught 27 medical students a total of 47 lessons. Learner knowledge scores improved immediately after lessons (1.24/3 ± 0.92 before lesson vs 2.75/3 ± 0.49 after lesson, p < 0.001) and were sustained at 2 weeks after lesson (1.24/3 ± 0.92 before lesson vs 2.47 ± 0.61 2 weeks after lesson, p < 0.001). RTs believed that the tool improved their clinical teaching, with themes of reducing stress around impromptu teaching, improving basic content delivery, the power of microlearning, and developing self-efficacy identified in qualitative interviews.

Guided worksheets offer content and can support RTs in providing effective clinical teaching while improving their comfort and self-efficacy. Expansion of these tools to additional high-yield topics may offer further support for resident teaching in the clinical setting.