Resident-as-Teacher Curriculum and Assessment Tool for Brief Didactic Teaching in Pediatrics

Abstract Many residents strive to be effective teachers but face several barriers early in their career. For instance, barriers include incomplete medical knowledge of pediatric-specific content, limited training on structuring adult educational experiences, and time constraints of clinical responsibilities. These factors lead to wasted opportunities for residents to practice their teaching and improve their teaching and communication skills while cementing their own medical knowledge. In addition, once this education has occurred, standardized objective assessment of the quality of the educational encounter is often lacking. The purpose of this resource is to provide a comprehensive approach for educating residents on key facets of teaching while improving quality of education delivered to medical students. The observed structured teaching evaluation (OSTE), used for evaluation of resident skills with regards to brief didactic teaching, allows standardized objective assessment that we hope may help other training institutions expand or improve their own resident-as-teacher curricula. This resource was first implemented in May 2013 at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and evaluated as a controlled, prospective, pre/post educational study over a 5-month period. It was directed towards first-year pediatric residents on the hospital medicine rotation because of their active teaching role with third-year medical students. Approximately 50 first-year residents were recruited via email, with 92% agreeing to participate. All participants completed the curriculum. There was significant pre-post difference in one of the key domains of teaching competency for the residents who received the curriculum, as well as a notable trend for overall competency.