Residents need better teaching skills, UCI survey says

Deirdre Newman

A new survey released by a researcher at UC Irvine shows medical

residents, who spend a lot of time teaching medical students, are not

getting sufficient teacher training.

The survey, released Sunday, shows that 75% of residency program

directors in six medical specialties believe their residents need more

formal training in teacher skills, said Dr. Elizabeth Morrison, assistant

clinical professor of family medicine.

Residents are physicians who have finished medical school and are

going through paid training programs to allow them to practice in their

chosen specialties.

The training is essential, Morrison says, because residents provide a

lot of role modeling and hands-on training to students that more senior

physicians aren’t giving.

“This training is important not only to help medical students learn

their core clinical education, but also to help residents develop

teaching and communication skills that will assist them with patient

education.”

However, one local medical resident doesn’t see the relevance of more

formal teacher education because he says most medical training is not

imparted in a classroom where traditional teaching methods are required.

“It occurs by ongoing experience and shared experiences between the

patients they see,” said Mark Mendoza, a resident at UCI Medical Center.

The UCI survey is the most recent since 1993 and the first to analyze

the use of teacher training in specialties like surgery, obstetrics,

gynecology, psychiatry and pediatrics.

The survey found that 55% of medical education leaders surveyed said

their school offered some kind of formal teacher training for residents.

Even at the schools that do not offer training, most directors indicated

that it is only because they do not have the financial resources to do

so, Morrison said.

Mendoza said the only training he thinks would be beneficial for

residents is to give them tips on how to monitor their students’ progress

and comprehension.

“The way it’s usually done is the resident tells the medical student,

‘this is how it is,”’ Mendoza said. “It’s kind of nice if the resident

gets formal training on doing a follow-up to see if [the students]

understand.”