Determination of the most important factors in overall effectiveness of a clinical teacher: students’ point of view

Introduction. Development of a faculty evaluation program determines the unique values and priorities of an education institute. Preparation of evaluation questionnaires on the basis of responders’ ideals and recognition, accuracy of analyses and practicality of assessment system are effective strategies for success. Elimination of inappropriate or parallel questions will shorten the questionnaires and promotes the evaluation process. In this study we tried to determine the most important factors pertinent to faculty evaluation by students. Methods. We analyzed retrospectively the faculty evaluation data gathered by questionnaires and completed by clinical students. Both the questions and answers recorded to a computer data bank with omission of the name, specialty and department of the faculty. SPSS statistical software was used for data analysis. The last question of the student questionnaire that inquired the overall effectiveness of the person was used for correlation to other questions. The multivariate regression model was used for determination of the least effective questions. Results. A total of 10624 questionnaires had been collected from students for evaluation of clinical members during the years 1996 till 1999. Of these 10346 which had an answer to the last question “What is your overall assessment of this attending teacher?” were used for this study. Of course the score of this question showed the strongest correlation with the average score of the form (r=0.93). So it was used as an index for overall assessment of the faculty member. The scores given to the other questions of the form were correlated with score of this question. All of the questions showed statistically significant correlation with the reference question. The highest correlation coefficients were in the questions “Ability to motivate the student in scientific ground” (r=0.820), “Guidance of the student in scientific and research needs” (r=0.806) and “fluency and clarity in his discussions & lectures....” (r=0.805). Multivariate regression analysis showed that the questions “Use of available teaching aids”, “Teaching the emergency and common problems” and “ability to interpret the Para clinical workups” had no statistical significance in determining the overall effectiveness of the teacher. In summarizing the questions to three aspects of “scientific knowledge”, “educational efficacy” and “interpersonal behavior” and their correlation to overall assessment the scientific knowledge showed the weakest correlation. Conclusion. Use of too many questions in the structure of the questionnaire will not have any additional data except for a vague repetition of previous responses. The overall assessment of the students of their faculty is based mainly on fluency in their discussions, clarity of the materials and lectures, guidance of the student and appropriate interpersonal behavior which can positively affect them.