“I’m too busy to teach!” Creating a “resident as teacher” workshop

Abstract

Residents should learn about teaching. Effective teaching is an integral part of the CanMEDS Scholar role. Royal College accreditation standards acknowledge the need for developing the teaching skills of residents and LCME accreditation standards require that residents who teach medical students be prepared for their roles in teaching and assessment. A “resident as teacher” workshop can be a valuable venue for residents to gain knowledge of teaching but a daunting activity to organize. We will provide a review of our successful “Resident as Teacher” workshop and share information to guide others in the planning and delivery of such a workshop. Topics reviewed: rationale and important concepts which should be included in the workshop, teaching and learning activities which focus on teaching in the clinical setting, assessment and how to give feedback, lastly, introduce practical learning exercises, such as a one-minute preceptor activity, a role-model activity, use of audience response technology in an assessment activity and use of feedback cases. Our workshop was comprised of short didactic lectures prior to the introduction of the active learning components. Throughout the workshop, participants were immersed in exercises such as video review with audience participation devices, discussion and role play. Resident evaluations of the workshop revealed that the more highly interactive the activity, the more enjoyable and useful it was found. The workshop was very highly reviewed and requests for continued activities received. A follow-up questionnaire four months after the workshop revealed that the workshop was successful in raising the awareness of the importance of teaching skills and demonstrated changes in teaching behaviors.