Effectiveness of resident as teacher curriculum in preparing emergency medicine residents for their teaching role

INTRODUCTION Over the past 30 years, recognizing the need and importance of training residents in teaching skills has resulted in several resident-as-teacher programs. The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of this teaching initiative and investigate the improvement in residents' teaching skills through evaluating their satisfaction and perceived effectiveness as well as assessing medical students' perception of the residents' teaching quality. METHODS This research is a quasi-experimental study with pre- and post-tests, continuing from Dec 2010 to May 2011 in Imam Hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences. In this survey, Emergency Medicine Residents (n=32) participated in an 8-hour workshop. The program evaluation was performed based on Kirkpatrick's model by evaluation of residents in two aspects: self-assessment and evaluation by interns who were trained by these residents. Content validity of the questionnaires was judged by experts and reliability was carried out by test re-test. The questionnaires were completed before and after the intervention. Paired sample t-test was applied to analyze the effect of RAT curriculum and workshop on the improvement of residents' teaching skills based on their self-evaluation and Mann-Whitney U test was used to identify significant differences between the two evaluator groups before and after the workshop. RESULTS The results indicated that residents' attitude towards their teaching ability was improved significantly after participating in the workshop (p<0.001). The result of residents' evaluation by interns showed no significant difference before and after the workshop (p=0.07). CONCLUSION On the whole, the educational workshop for Residents as Teacher for emergency medicine residents resulted in favorable outcomes in the second evaluated level of Kirkpatrick's model, i.e. it showed measurable positive changes in the self-assessments of medical residents about different aspects of teaching ability and performance. However, implementing training sessions for resident physicians, although effective in improving their confidence and self-assessment of their teaching skills, seems to cause no positive change in the third evaluated level of Kirkpatrick's model, i.e. the residents' behaviors, and it does not seem to raise students' satisfaction or meet their expectations.