CONCLUSION: A minority of teaching hospitals have ongoing faculty development programs for improving their faculty's teaching skills and evaluations are primitive. University hospitals are more likely to have ongoing FD and to have programs that are more developed. Overall, only a limited percentage of faculty have been trained, especially community-based and subspecialist faculty. These gaps should be considered in future funding decisions to provide learning opportunities for all faculty. PURPOSE: This study was done to determine the relationship between students' ratings of faculty on a clinical teaching evaluation form and a medical lecture evaluation form. METHODS: Twenty-three faculty received ratings between July 1999 -December 2000 from medical students immediately after a didactic lecture on an 11-item lecture evaluation form that used a scale from 1 (not satisfied) to 7 (very satisfied) to assess lecture skills (Chronbach's alpha=.96) and at the end of a clinical rotation on a 15-item clinical teaching form that used a scale from 1 (never/poor) to 5 (always/superb) to assess attending/teaching behaviors in the patient care setting (Chronbach's alpha=.97). An average of 6 and 16 students per faculty completed the lecture and the clinical teaching forms respectively. Average students ratings on all items for each faculty member were calculated. Pearson correlation coefficients were computed between the average scores for each item on one form and the overall average scores on the other evaluation form. RESULTS: Overall there is a correlation of .69 (p < .01) between the average scores on the two forms. Only correlation coefficients above .65 (to explain >45% of the varaince) were considered meaningful. The following five items from the lecture form significantly correlated (p < .01) with the average clinical teaching scores: how well the course was organized (r=.69), how effectively time was used in class activities (r=.67), the clarity of the instructor's explanations (r=.70), the instructor's use of examples or illustrations to help clarify the material (r=.67), and having learned something which I consider valuable (r=.67). The following three items from the clinical teaching form significantly correlated (p < .01) with the average medical lecture scores: teaches diagnostic skills (r=.73), teaches effective patient/family communication skills (r=.72), and teaches principals of cost-appropriate care (r=.70). Interestingly, these three items were the only items that included the word``teaches'' suggesting direct didactic instruction as opposed to the teaching strategies suggested in the other items (i.e., adjusts teaching, coaches, asks). Items from the lecture form that did not correlate with the average clinical teaching scores (e.g., specifying objectives, summarizing material, encouraging class discussion) are often considered fundamental in classroom teaching and may not easily translate to clinical teaching. Yet, the larger number of related items from the lecture form suggests that lecture techniques do crossover to clinical teaching, especially with providing explanations and using examples. CONCLUSION: There appear to be some differences in the skills involved in clinical teaching and lecturing; only 47% of the variance is explained between them. Although requiring more work by students, using two forms to evaluate teaching may better enable instructors to identify specific strategies where they are strong or need improvement for the various teaching activities they perform.