Resident and faculty perceptions of effective clinical teaching in family practice

Increasing interest in clinical teaching has led to the realization that the unique subset of skills which characterizes effective clinical teaching needs to be identified. Such identification will lead to development of these skills and improvement in the quality of clinical teaching. Family practice faculty are vitally concerned with improving their clinical teaching skills, since clinical teaching is the core of education in family medicine and since many family physicians who become preceptors have had no formal training as teachers. In this investigation of effective clinical teaching behaviors, faculty and residents generally agree in their perceptions of the helpfulness of 58 clinical teaching behaviors. Neither group felt that emphasis on references and research is as important a factor in effective clinical teaching as are residents' active participation in the learning situation and positive preceptor attitudes toward teaching and residents. It was perceived that the ineffective clinical teacher has a negative attitude toward residents, is inaccessible, and lacks skills in providing feedback, while the effective clinical teacher has skills in two-way communication, creates an educational environment that facilitates learning, and provides constructive feedback to residents.