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. 2018 Aug;10(4):459-463.
doi: 10.4300/JGME-D-18-00039.1.

Those Who Teach, Can Do: Characterizing the Relationship Between Teaching and Clinical Skills in a Residency Program

C Christopher Smith, Lori R Newman, Grace C Huang

Those Who Teach, Can Do: Characterizing the Relationship Between Teaching and Clinical Skills in a Residency Program

C Christopher Smith et al. J Grad Med Educ. 2018 Aug.

Abstract

Background: Teaching practice is presumed to have significant overlap with clinical skills, yet few studies to date have assessed how residents' teaching skills influence their clinical performance.

Objective: We examined the relationship between the professional roles of residents as teachers and as practicing clinicians as well as how learning about teaching contributes to enhanced skills in the clinical realm.

Methods: Using the framework method, the authors performed a 2-phased (exploratory and confirmatory) qualitative analysis on the data sets to characterize the relationship between resident teaching and clinical skills. To investigate the relationship between teaching and clinical work, we extracted qualitative data from 300 evaluations of clinical performance for residents in a large, urban, academic internal medicine residency program submitted over a 3-year period. Informed by the preliminary framework that evolved from this analysis, we conducted a focus group of 6 residents in a dedicated clinician-educator track to examine how teaching was related to clinical work.

Results: We identified attributes and skills of good resident teachers that enhance clinical skills, categorized as 18 subdomains within 4 domains: relationships, communication, relation to self, and relationship with knowledge.

Conclusions: Themes that link clinical and teaching skills are similar for both patient-physician and learner-teacher relationships. Improving residents' teaching skills may not only benefit the education of learners but also improve the care of patients.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest: The authors declare they have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure
Figure
Conceptual Framework Linking Teaching and Clinical Skills Drawn From Resident Evaluations
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

  • Education in the time of COVID-19.
    Bloom DA, Reid JR, Cassady CI. Bloom DA, et al. Pediatr Radiol. 2020 Jul;50(8):1055-1058. doi: 10.1007/s00247-020-04728-8. Epub 2020 May 28. Pediatr Radiol. 2020. PMID: 32468286 Free PMC article. No abstract available.

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