Developing and testing an instrument to measure the effectiveness of clinical teaching in an academic medical center

Abstract

Purpose: Instruments that rate teaching effectiveness provide both positive and negative feedback to clinician-educators, helping them improve their teaching. The authors developed the Clinical Teaching Effectiveness Instrument, which was theory-based and generic across their entire academic medical center, The Cleveland Clinic Foundation. They tested it for reliability, validity, and usability.

Method: In 1997, using an iterative qualitative development process involving key stakeholders, the authors developed an institution-wide instrument to routinely evaluate clinical faculty. The resulting instrument has 15 questions that use a five-point evaluation scale. The instrument, which was administered to medical students, residents, and fellows over a 20-month period, produced data that were rigorously tested for instrument characteristics, reliability, criterion-related and content validity, and usability.

Results: This instrument, implemented in all departments across the institution, produced data on a total of 711 clinician-educators. Correlation coefficients among the items were high (.57 to .77). The scores were reliable (g coefficient of 0.935), and the instrument had both content and criterion-related validity.

Conclusions: The Cleveland Clinic's Clinical Teaching Effectiveness Instrument is reliable and valid, as well as usable. It can be used as an evaluation tool for a wide variety of clinical teaching settings.