John E. Houghland

Teaching how to teach: a novel teaching rotation

mentors, mediators, leaders and teachers by participating in interactive and experiential group exercises. This emphasis on mentoring, mediating, leadership and teaching helps fulfil Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) competencies. What was done Thirty-two residents from seven disciplines (family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology, pathology, paediatrics, psychiatry, surgery) and seven affiliated institutions participated in this year’s conference. The workshop included large-group discussion, smallgroup brainstorming, and objective structured teaching encounters (OSTEs). For the OSTEs, learners were divided into groups of four in which we attempted to combine people from different disciplines from the same institution. The four OSTE scenarios were: teaching in front of the patient; teaching on work rounds; giving feedback to an attending doctor, and giving feedback to a senior resident or peer. Volunteer third and fourth year medical students (the equivalent to Years 4 and 5 in the UK) played the standardised students and residents. Two attending doctors played the standardised attending role. At the end of the workshop, participants responded to the instruction: ‘Name one specific thing that you will do as a chief resident as a result of this workshop.’ In an attempt to evaluate the long-term impact of the conference, a follow-up survey was e-mailed to the participants 3 months into their chief year. At the end of the conference, participants also completed a workshop evaluation containing items to which they responded using a scale of 1–5 (1 = not useful, 5 = very useful). Evaluation of results and impact In total, 81% (26 ⁄ 32) of the participants completed the conference evaluation and provided a written response to our final instruction. The participants felt the OSTE cases were useful (mean ± standard deviation [SD] score: 4.15 ± 0.78), with the feedback OSTEs being the most useful (mean ± SD: peer 4.38 ± 0.75, attending 4.19 ± 0.98). Almost all of the participants (96%) rated the day as good or excellent (mean ± SD: 4.35 ± 0.69) (using a scale of 1–5, where 1 = poor and 5 = excellent). We analysed the responses to our final instruction by theme and found six themes: feedback; expectations and goals; observation; mediation; teaching, and organisation. More than half (14 ⁄ 26, 54%) of the participants wrote a goal related to feedback and nearly 20% (5 ⁄ 26) wrote a goal related to setting expectations or communicating goals. Data collection from the 3-month follow-up survey is currently in progress. This conference was very well received and has allowed rising chief residents from different disciplines and affiliated institutions to associate with one another outside the hospital setting.