Developing Residents as Teachers: Process and Content
Authors: Johnson C. Erwin , Bachur Richard , Priebe Cedric , Barnes-Ruth Andrea , Lovejoy Frederick H. , Hafler Janet Palmer 
Published: December 2021

These data characterize and illuminate an analysis of experiences about teaching during each year of a pediatric residency training program in a tertiary care center. The curriculum sought to introduce many concepts about teaching, and residents reported that they:

1. Used concepts introduced about feedback;

2. Began to appreciate that teaching is more than imparting knowledge;

3. Began to identify teaching opportunities in the context of patient care; and

4. Incorporated the practice of establishing goals and expectations for learning with their learners.

These data suggest that as interns are exposed to concepts about teaching, they are able to identify what they can offer students, irrespective of the amount of knowledge and clinical experience they have about pediatric medicine. Helping interns appreciate that teaching stems from one's experiences and is much more than just "telling what one knows" was an explicit goal of the Teaching Program's curriculum design group.

Another conclusion is that PGY-2 residents are aware that patient care responsibilities pose challenges to teaching. PGY-2 residents at CHB are transitioning from a relatively intense teaching experience as PGY-1 interns to becoming team leaders as PGY-3 residents. Thus, the issues about teaching in the PGY-2 year seem less defined. Helping PGY-2 residents better integrate teaching with patient care continues to be a challenge. Although the focus of the PGY-2 curriculum in the Teaching Program focused on developing skills to become teachers during the final year of residency, what emerged from PGY-2 residents were their concerns and insights about teaching better in situations in which patient care responsibilities were the priority.

In addition to using concepts introduced in the sessions, residents in all three training years unanimously reported one impact of the Teaching Program: it made them more "aware" of the importance of teaching and of developing teaching skills. They also began to realize that they require feedback about their teaching from peers, attending physicians, and learner sources. By experiencing the Teaching Program, residents identified other useful approaches and resources to learning about teaching, mainly by observing their peers. Additionally, many residents were beginning to develop individualized approaches toward teaching based on their experiences in the clinical setting and their development as clinicians—the examples shared by interns about how they actually engaged learners—support this conclusion. Finally, the Teaching Program stimulated the process of reflection about teaching—mainly the importance of teaching, the challenges of performing as better teachers, and learning ways to understand how individuals learn. The importance of developing reflective practice skills about teaching has been stated by Schon28 and Boud et al,29 and as a result of the Teaching Program, residents identified situations and moments in which they thought more about their teaching. Assisting residents in developing reflective practice to improve their teaching and to understand their learners better remains a further challenge to resident-as-teacher programs.

There was one unanimity: residents and faculty who taught in the program agreed to continue the Teaching Program. Residents became "co-owners" of the Teaching Program by becoming cofaculty with attending physicians. Residents replaced the medical educators as core teaching faculty. The educator's teaching role changed from direct contact to a consultant's role, allowing the resident-attending physician teams to teach the program. Finally, those resident-attending physician teaching teams meet to review and redesign the instructional formats and materials for each workshop. The chief resident assumed a more responsible role by getting the resident-faculty teams together to deliver their respective workshops.

Potential for the Future

In reviewing the 3-year experience with the Teaching Program—from conceptualization to realization to evaluation—several insights were gained, which may prove useful to other residency training program efforts.

1. Leadership was vital to implementing the Teaching Program.

2. Professional leaders from several levels of medical education were actively involved in the process: from the hospital, the CHB's associate physician-in-chief (also the residency training program director), the CHB's chief resident, and resident and faculty members of the planning group; and from the medical school, the HMS dean of medical education, the associate director for faculty development, and the HMS physician fellow in medical education.

3. Setting aside time simply to discuss teaching was an integral part of all processes, as were the opportunities for residents and attending faculty to share their experiences and perspectives on teaching as it related to their needs as developing physicians.

4. The workshop sessions were an integral aspect of the residents' work weeks. During these sessions, residents had opportunities to explore teaching and learning in relation to their concurrent experiences of residency training.

5. Educator and physician teams emerged as key and useful elements in collaborating to develop a strategy to develop residents as teachers.

6. Evaluation strategies and methods varied in their individual effectiveness in evaluating the Teaching Program; however, in combination they revealed useful insight into what residents think about their development as teachers and how they go about teaching based on their level of clinical training.

This work provides one model for others to use in developing a curriculum on teaching. Given different circumstances—ie, if medical educators are not available, if the residency program is a small one, or if a hospital opts not to develop a separate, self-standing curriculum—faculty can elect to train themselves in the use of this curriculum and then implement the program. Copies of the curriculum are available on request from the corresponding author.

In the end, the CHB experience with the Teaching Program can be looked at as an approach to how disciplines of education and medicine can merge to meet the teaching and learning needs of medical professionals as they develop as educators in a specialized training setting.