Ten Steps to Effective Teaching as a Non-Physician Educator

With the competing pressures facing medical school faculty, teaching is no longer considered a top priority. For many reasons, both internal and external, patient care and research activities receive more recognition and financial support than teaching. Most physicians believe they teach well and are frequently correct despite their lack of formal training on the art and science of medical education. Too often this is due primarily to time constraints and a perceived lack of relevance. As a non-physician medical educator with a terminal degree in Adult Education, there were many things I needed to learn to appropriately develop curricula that would attract a busy physician... who was not exactly clear if they needed anything I had to teach! The literature review indicated that most physicians receive little training for their teaching roles. Irby says that many (physicians) develop teaching behaviors based on a combination of their own experiences and general conceptions of teaching derived from experience and observation. In a study that rank ordered 30 basic pedagogical principles that could enhance teaching effectiveness, clinical teachers, and non-clinician medical educators had a clear lack of congruence in their ratings of these principles. They did, however, agree on five areas (McLeod et al., 2009):