Other medical schools offer teaching aid for residents, but Morrison's study is distinctive for describing detailed instructional methods that other medical schools can easily adopt, and for measuring improvement in teaching skills with a validated and reliable examination. A national survey in 2000 by Morrison and colleagues showed that approximately 50 percent of residency programs offered some type of formal teaching skills training to residents; however, one-time lecture and workshop formats predominated, and less than 5 percent used objective methods like Morrison's to measure efficacy of the training interventions with residents.
"Residencies as we know them now are constantly evolving, with the current major trend mandating the setting of clearer learning expectations for resident competency and providing objective evidence of their accomplishment," said Dr. John R. Boker, director of research in medical education in the UCI College of Medicine and study co-author. "Teaching ability is one such competency that is attaining more prominence as a requirement for residency program accreditation, and Dr. Morrison's intervention provides a model for addressing this requirement."
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Contact: Tom Vasich
tmvasich@uci.edu
949-824-6455
University of California - Irvine
17-Aug-2004