The improvement of faculty teaching through evaluation: a follow-up report

Soliciting feedback: on becoming an effective clinical teacher

The art of teaching is difficult to master. When teaching in small groups, as often happens in clinical medicine, there is an opportunity to find out what works by speaking directly with students. The information they provide can serve as an invaluable guide, permitting refinement of skill over time. There are, however, significant barriers to this process. The art lies in finding an approach that is comfortable for both parties. The authors refer to this activity as soliciting feedback. They offer guidelines for soliciting feedback as an aid to improving teaching efforts.

Clinical tutor evaluation: a 5-year study by students on an in-patient service and residents in an ambulatory care clinic

Medical students on an in-patient service and residents working in an ambulatory care clinic have regularly evaluated their clinical tutors over the 5 years 1985-1989. Both groups of raters reliably and predictably evaluated their tutors and both emphasize between-tutor comparisons more than actual rating values for individual tutors. Tutors active in both contexts regularly receive higher ratings from the medical students than from the residents. Mid-course feedback to tutors in the medical course had no impact on end-of-course ratings. In neither context did tutor ratings improve from one evaluation to the next. Both groups reliably discriminate between the teaching skills and the personality traits of individual tutors.