Those Who Teach, Can Do: Characterizing the Relationship Between Teaching and Clinical Skills in a Residency Program

Abstract

ABSTRACT Background  Teaching practice is presumed to have significant overlap with clinical skills, yet few studies to date have assessed how residents' teaching skills influence their clinical performance. Objective  We examined the relationship between the professional roles of residents as teachers and as practicing clinicians as well as how learning about teaching contributes to enhanced skills in the clinical realm. Methods  Using the framework method, the authors performed a 2-phased (exploratory and confirmatory) qualitative analysis on the data sets to characterize the relationship between resident teaching and clinical skills. To investigate the relationship between teaching and clinical work, we extracted qualitative data from 300 evaluations of clinical performance for residents in a large, urban, academic internal medicine residency program submitted over a 3-year period. Informed by the preliminary framework that evolved from this analysis, we conducted a focus group of 6 residents in a dedicated clinician-educator track to examine how teaching was related to clinical work. Results  We identified attributes and skills of good resident teachers that enhance clinical skills, categorized as 18 subdomains within 4 domains: relationships, communication, relation to self, and relationship with knowledge. Conclusions  Themes that link clinical and teaching skills are similar for both patient-physician and learner-teacher relationships. Improving residents' teaching skills may not only benefit the education of learners but also improve the care of patients.