Background/Purpose:

Clinical fellows can have a major educational impact on students and residents.  However, a number of barriers to teaching during inpatient consultation exist in the hospital environment, making it challenging to initiate teaching interactions, provide a positive environment for learning and deliver effective teaching.  Improving fellows’ teaching skills has been proposed as a strategy to enhance teaching during consultation.  Within Internal Medicine (IM) subspecialties, fellows’ attitudes towards teaching and interest in programs to improve teaching skills has been largely unexplored.  We conducted a needs assessment to evaluate IM subspecialty fellows’ interest in teaching and improvement of their teaching skills. 

Methods:

379 IM subspecialty fellows from three academic medical centers (Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) were invited to complete a survey assessing their attitudes towards teaching, assessment of barriers to teaching during consultation, interest in training related to teaching skills, and the current practices of assessment and improvement of teaching skills during fellowship. 

Results:

179 fellows from ten subspecialties responded to the survey (47% response rate), including 15 rheumatology fellows.  80% of fellows anticipate teaching during their careers, and 22% plan to participate in medical education scholarship (Table 1).  Fellows reported a strong interest in teaching and programs aimed at improving their teaching skills (Table 2).  Fellows who anticipated teaching during their career had more interest in teaching and teacher training.  However, the majority of subjects (68%) reported no specific training focused on teaching skills during their fellowship and 37% have never received feedback about their teaching. 

Conclusion:

Among a large sample of IM fellows participating in this study, the majority anticipate teaching during their careers.  Fellows expressed a strong interest in programs aimed at improving their teaching skills.  However, the majority of fellows did not have the opportunity to participate in such programs during fellowship and a significant minority reported that they did not receive feedback on their teaching.  A need exists among fellows for programs focused on improving their teaching skills. 

« Back to 2015 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting

ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/internal-medicine-subspecialty-fellows-attitudes-towards-teaching-and-learning-how-to-teach-a-needs-assessment/