Congruence between residents' and clinical instructors perceptions of teaching in outpatient care centres

This paper describes a study to determine the extent of agreement about clinical teaching between clinical instructors and their house officers in selected family practice centres. Their perceptions were compared with regard to (1) clinical content emphasized, and (2) specific clinical teaching behaviours used by the instructors. Two versions of a questionnaire were used to assess views, and multivariate and univariate analyses of variance used to determine differences. The results suggest that the instructors differed from their house officers on certain dimensions and not on others. Those differences are discussed and strategies are suggested for increasing the agreement with the expectation that more agreement about educational preferences and expectations would enhance house officers' clinical learning in the centres.