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

Introduction: Over the past 30 years, recognizing the need andimportance of training residents in teaching skills has resulted inseveral resident-as-teacher programs. The purpose of this studywas to explore the impact of this teaching initiative and investigatethe improvement in residents’ teaching skills through evaluatingtheir satisfaction and perceived effectiveness as well as assessingmedical students’ perception of the residents’ teaching quality.Methods: This research is a quasi-experimental study with pre- andpost-tests, continuing from Dec 2010 to May 2011 in Imam Hospital,Tehran University of Medical Sciences. In this survey, EmergencyMedicine Residents (n=32) participated in an 8-hour workshop. Theprogram evaluation was performed based on Kirkpatrick’s model byevaluation of residents in two aspects: self-assessment and evaluationby interns who were trained by these residents. Content validity ofthe questionnaires was judged by experts and reliability was carriedout by test re-test. The questionnaires were completed before andafter the intervention. Paired sample t-test was applied to analyzethe effect of RAT curriculum and workshop on the improvement ofresidents’ teaching skills based on their self-evaluation and Mann–Whitney U test was used to identify significant differences betweenthe two evaluator groups before and after the workshop.Results: The results indicated that residents’ attitude towards theirteaching ability was improved significantly after participatingin the workshop (p<0.001). The result of residents’ evaluationby interns showed no significant difference before and after theworkshop (p=0.07).Conclusion: On the whole, the educational workshop for Residentsas Teacher for emergency medicine residents resulted in favorableoutcomes in the second evaluated level of Kirkpatrick’s model,i.e. it showed measurable positive changes in the self-assessmentsof medical residents about different aspects of teaching abilityand performance. However, implementing training sessionsfor resident physicians, although effective in improving theirconfidence and self-assessment of their teaching skills, seemsto cause no positive change in the third evaluated level ofKirkpatrick’s model, i.e. the residents’ behaviors, and it does notseem to raise students’ satisfaction or meet their expectations.Keywords: Resident as teacher; Curriculum; Emergency medicine