How would you answer this question about yourself? For those of us who spend a significant amount of our professional lives teaching others, whether as college classroom teacher, clinician, residency attending, or fellowship physician, this is perhaps the most important skill. If, as a teacher, you somehow teach ineffectively, then you’ve failed at your principle job. The problem is, being a good teacher is a somewhat ephemeral and ill-defined endeavor, which is different to some extent for each of our students. Some trainees will benefit from an authoritarian – intimidating and dictatorial – while others will respond better to a softer or more democratic/Socratic approach.

When one speaks with students it does seem, though, that there are some general principles or characteristics of good teaching. Sutkin and colleagues performed a systematic review of the literature, attempting to answer this question as it relates to clinical teaching.¹ Despite the specificity of the setting – the clinical arena – you’ll note the generalizability of their findings. These researchers first discussed amongst themselves common themes pertaining to a “good clinical teacher.” They found five primary themes:

It’s pretty clear that these characteristics fall into cognitive and noncognitive categories. Think of the best teacher you experienced during your training. You’ll find that teacher was usually highly knowledgeable about their field but also had that social spark that leads to a high-quality interaction.

Sutkin’s research group then performed a systematic review of the literature, finding 68 articles that satisfied their inclusion criteria (26 published before 1966 and 42 published after 1966). Interestingly, all of the articles except one published before 1966 were essays rather than research studies. The common themes discovered during this search were:

A recent survey study of 321 preclinical and clinical medical students found trainees valued teachers who were inspirational with a deeper knowledge of the subject and ability to explain it, a student-friendly nature, and an ability to communicate well.²

The one conclusion from this research, general though it may be, is “excellent teaching…transcends ordinary teaching and is characterized by inspiring, supporting, actively involving, and communicating with students”.¹ Much easier said than done.

How to Be a Good Teacher

It’s not enough for us to simply mimic those characteristics identified in good teachers. Clinical teachers are pulled in many directions, and we don’t often have the leisure to simply stop what we’re doing to teach. Clinical volume, procedure completion, outside meetings, and many other responsibilities pull at our attention. Here are some suggestions to help all of us improve our clinical teaching.

Being a great teacher is an ongoing process to which all of us in medicine should pay more attention. It’s a hard, often thankless job, but with the potential for incredible satisfaction. Just observe how you feel when one of your trainees realizes they get it. The glint in the eye when understanding strikes. The look of pride in a successfully completed procedure. The moment when you realize that person you donated so much time and effort to is now a fully functioning and excellent physician. What could be better than that? Take a few minutes and analyze your own teaching; I’m sure each of us can find ways to improve and benefit our trainees.

Best wishes.