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Preparing fourth-year medical students to teach during internship

  • Innovations In Education
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Abstract

Interns are expected to teach medical students, yet there is little formal training in medical school to prepare them for this role. To enhance the teaching skills of our graduating students we initiated a 4-hour “teaching to teach” course as part of the end of the fourth-year curriculum. Course evaluations demonstrate that students strongly support this program (overall ratings 2000 to 2005: mean=4.4 [scale 1 to 5], n=224). When 2004 course participants were surveyed during the last month of their internship, 84% “agree” or “strongly agree” with the statement: “The teaching to teach course helped prepare me for my role as a teacher during internship” (2005: mean 4.2 [scale 1 to 5], n=45, response rate 60%). A course preparing fourth-year students to teach during internship is both feasible and reproducible, with a minimal commitment of faculty and resident time. Participants identify it as an important addition to their education and as useful during internship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Richard J. Haber MD & Gurpreet S. Dhaliwal MD

  2. Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Naomi S. Bardach MD

  3. Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Rajesh Vedanthan MD, MPH

  4. Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Leslie A. Gillum MD

  5. Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, NY, USA

    Lawrence A. Haber BA

Authors
  1. Richard J. Haber MD
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  2. Naomi S. Bardach MD
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  3. Rajesh Vedanthan MD, MPH
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  4. Leslie A. Gillum MD
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  5. Lawrence A. Haber BA
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  6. Gurpreet S. Dhaliwal MD
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Richard J. Haber MD.

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The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare for this article.

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Haber, R.J., Bardach, N.S., Vedanthan, R. et al. Preparing fourth-year medical students to teach during internship. J GEN INTERN MED 21, 518–520 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1525-1497.2006.00441.x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1525-1497.2006.00441.x

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