Residents As Teachers

Resident Teaching Activities in Core Clerkships

Medicine

1. Residents deliver case presentations and provide relevant teaching points on a regular basis at outpatient morning report.   At the end of this daily conference, constructive feedback is provided by the supervising chief medical resident regarding the effectiveness of each presenting resident's teaching methods.

2. Residents deliver case presentations at the department's morbidity and mortality conference.   At the end of this weekly conference, constructive feedback is provided by the supervising chief medical residents regarding the effectiveness of each presenting resident's teaching methods.

3. Residents lead small group discussions of residents and students at weekly evidence-based medicine conferences, held during the winter and spring months.   Medicine attendings supervise each small group and provide constructive feedback regarding each resident's teaching effectiveness.

4. Regular resident-led teaching sessions for other residents and medical students are held on inpatient services and are supervised by internal medicine ward attendings, who provide constructive feedback regarding effectiveness of teaching.

5. Residents receive formal training in clinical teaching skills at the end of their PGY-1 year as part of their rising PGY-2 orientation.   A formal teaching curriculum has been developed and will be introduced to the interns later in the academic year, as they near the transition to becoming PGY-2s.   The curriculum will be designed to further assist them in learning how to teach medical students before they step into their new roles of upper level residents.

Neurology

The Neurology Program encourages and supports the residents' role in medical student education. The new house staff are oriented to the clerkship goals and their roles as teachers, team leaders, and evaluators prior to beginning clinical service.  Additionally, in 2006-07 we implemented a seminar series for the residents on teaching skills and roles.  Prior to the first session the residents completed a "Clinical Teaching Perception Inventory" which identified the attributes of ideal teachers and compared them to the residents self perceptions.  Additional discussion was held on the nature and conduct of evaluations, providing specific examples of formative and summative evaluations.  Furthermore, the residents have a meaningful impact on the structure of medical student education.  For example, a long-standing morning conference was becoming untenable because of work-hour and clinical service conflicts.  After discussions with the chief residents the conference time and content was changed to better reflect the student's needs and the residents comfort with teaching.  Similarly, one part of the student orientation session was moved in time at the residents request to facilitate their own teaching and orientation of new students to learning expectations on Neurology.

Obstetrics/Gynecology

The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology recognizes the important role residents play in medical student education, and seeks to support this role by providing opportunities for resident development as teachers.  We have previously hosted a nationally-recognized educator (Dr. Deb DaRosa, Northwestern University Department of Surgery) for a weekend retreat for the residents on the topic of residents as teachers.  The department's education committee has introduced into the curriculum this year a 6 session series on teaching skills, led by faculty with education leadership roles in the department, including the residency director, clerkship director, and assistant clerkship director.  Each resident was provided in June with a copy of the Whitman "Residents as Teachers" manual.  The success of our residents as teachers is evident in the recognition our residents have received from the students, including 3 recent recipients of the Resident/Fellow Teaching Award (Lisa Christianson, 2003; Nora Arronte, 2004; Laura Smith, 2005) and a recent recipient of the James Ernest Kindred Award (Cara Heuser, 2006).  The department's recognition by the Mulholland Society in 2005 as the Best Teaching Department was as much attributable to excellent resident teaching as to outstanding faculty teaching.

Pediatrics

The Department of Pediatrics believes that a large portion of teaching medical students is delivered by the pediatric residents.   All pediatric residents have a one month teaching rotation during the R2 year where the focus of that rotation is on medical student teaching.   Residents have defined goals and objectives with a collection of articles from the BMJ as a background for medical student education.   During this rotation, the resident works one on one with junior medical students seeing patients in the ambulatory setting.   The resident selects patients based on what he or she feels would be good teaching patients for the medical student. The resident and student reviews each patient extensively, reviews the students' presentations with the students and gives informal didactic discussions on ambulatory pediatrics.   In the second half of each day, the resident teaches the junior medical students in the newborn and intermediate nurseries and the inpatient wards.   The resident prepares chalk talks, power point presentations and handouts depending on the type of talk and the topic itself. Residents spend 2 -3 hours in the afternoon working on these.   Residents are evaluated by the faculty on their teaching and materials.   The residents receive formal instruction on the style of presentations and ways to enhance PowerPoint discussions.

All Pediatrics residents are given copies of the orientation handout information provided to medical students. During the orientation of new housestaff, the Clerkship Director meets with the new interns to orient them to the clerkship here and their roles as teachers.    The Department has an annual series of workshops for all pediatric residents on teaching including topics such as ,   "Teaching in the Inpatient Setting", "Teaching in the Outpatient Setting", "Providing Feedback", "Leading a Team" and "How to Give 10 and 30 Minute Talks".   Residents also received teaching materials upon residency matriculation from the American Board of Pediatrics.   The Pediatrics Clinic Course Director reviews the goals, objectives and evaluation system for junior medical students annually and this is also a part of the Residency Goals and Objectives.  

The success of our residents as teachers is evident in the recognition our residents have received from the medical students, including annual awardees of the School of Medicine Resident/Fellow Teaching Awards.   Recent awardees include for this award include Drs. Jenny Boyd, Jeremy Middleton, and Jessica Simmons, 2006; Dr. Carol Boersma, Amber Heise, and Anita Swamy, 2005; Drs. Barrett Barnes and Robert Trundle, 2004.   Dr. Carol Boersma was the 2005 recipient of the James Ernest Kindred Award and the 2004 all-University Graduate Teaching Award.  

Surgery

The department of Surgery creates a philosophy of learning and teaching at all levels. We make it a point to emphasize to all applicants to our residency program that teaching is a priority. We pay particular attention to prior teaching awards or recognition for excellence in teaching when we rank the applicants. Didactic sessions that emphasize the residents' roles as teachers include Grand Rounds on "How to give Feedback", "Teaching Portfolios" and "Resident as Teacher".   These have been given during the past 18 months. In this same time period, we have seen a gratifying increase in the amount of educational research performed in our department. Two years ago we invited Dr. Deb DaRosa to visit our Department and present a workshop on the role of the "Resident as Teacher". The residents in our department have been recognized by the students each year for their dedication to teaching as evidenced by our dominance of the resident teaching awards.