Twelve tips for creating an academic teaching portfolio

An academic teaching portfolio is not only a requirement at many academic teaching institutions, but it is also important in a medical educator’s growth and development through documentation, reflection, evaluation, and change. Creating an academic portfolio may appear daunting at first but with careful advanced preparation, organized evidence collection of your educational work, proof of scholarship, and thorough documentation of self-reflection and change, you can produce a successful product that accurately represents your educational beliefs, accomplishments, and growth throughout your career. This article provides medical educators with twelve steps for creating a successful academic teaching portfolio.     

Twelve tips for developing palliative care teaching in an undergraduate curriculum for medical students

Abstract

Palliative care is the holistic care of patients with advanced, progressive incurable illness. Palliative care is well recognized as an essential component of medical student curricula. However, teaching is variable within medical schools. Using current literature, these tips aim to highlight key points necessary to facilitate the development and delivery of palliative care teaching to medical students. The key practice points include: clinical exposure to patients with palliative care needs and those that are dying, being compulsory (and integrated) across the course, summative and formative assessments to encourage learning, support from within the university for curricular time and development, visits to a hospice/inpatient palliative care facility, emphasis on clinically based learning later in the course, teaching by specialists in palliative care as well as specialists in other areas including Family Doctors/General Practitioners, innovative teaching methods and inter-professional learning to develop teaching.     

Twelve tips for teaching using videoconferencing

Videoconferencing is a highly flexible teaching tool. It can assist in delivery of a rapidly changing curriculum and can solve some of the problems caused by trying to deliver teaching to an audience dispersed across campuses. When well planned and delivered effectively, videoconferenced teaching sessions can be stimulating and enjoyable. An enthusiastic approach, a well-planned session, interactive teaching, use of site facilitators and a good working relationship with technical support are keys to success.     

Twelve tips on setting up and running a peer-led medical education society

Peer-led teaching is an established paradigm with benefits for student teachers, learners and the wider medical community. Students are increasingly taking ownership of such teaching, which has fuelled the creation of new peer-led medical education societies at universities around the UK. Students wishing to undertake such an endeavor must contend with concerns over the quality of peer-led teaching, logistical challenges, lack of senior support and difficulties accessing relevant resources to design and appraise their initiatives. Peer-led medical education societies represent a relatively novel concept, and students may struggle to find practical information on how to approach these challenges. We propose that these obstacles can be overcome by thorough event planning, understanding the role and features of high quality peer-led education in supplementing medical school curricula, maintaining a strong working relationship with local medical faculty, and learning from the wider medical education community.     

Twelve tips for teaching oncology to non-oncologists

Abstract

Background: Teaching subspecialty care to trainees who are not pursuing that subspecialty poses many challenges. These challenges are amplified in the teaching of oncology to non-oncologists because there are more new therapies emerging in oncology than in any other discipline, and there are few oncologic issues managed by generalists without consultation. Concurrently, there is an increasing need for generalists to manage many aspects of care for patients with cancer.

Aim: To provide 12 tips for oncologists to use to educate trainees on their oncology rotations.

Method: The tips provided are based upon the available literature and the authors’ own experience.

Results: The 12 tips presented offer specific strategies for oncologists to enhance their teaching by selection of appropriate content and enhancing delivery. Focus is placed on aspects of oncology that trainees are likely to encounter as a generalist or non-cancer subspecialist. While oncology is used as the case study, these strategies are adaptable to any subspecialty area.

Conclusion: Oncologists and other subspecialists can be core medical educators.     

Twelve tips for peer observation of teaching

This paper outlines twelve tips for undertaking peer observation of teaching in medical education, using the peer review model and the experiences of the authors. An accurate understanding of teaching effectiveness is required by individuals, medical schools, and universities to evaluate the learning environment and to substantiate academic and institutional performance. Peer Observation of Teaching is one tool that provides rich, qualitative evidence for teachers, quite different from closed-ended student evaluations. When Peer Observation of Teaching is incorporated into university practice and culture, and is conducted in a mutually respectful and supportive way, it has the potential to facilitate reflective change and growth for teachers.     

Twelve tips for teaching the informed consent conversation

Abstract

Obtaining informed consent has been traditionally viewed as a mundane task, learned on the job and often relegated to an inexperienced member of the healthcare team. In reality, the process of obtaining informed consent is complex, challenging, and warrants focused teaching, observation and feedback. There are few published standards for what should be included in a high-quality informed consent conversation, and little or no guidance regarding how to best teach the process of conducting this type of shared decision-making conversation. The following twelve tips provide a roadmap for teaching the essential components of how to obtain informed consent, including both content and communication skills, with a focus on common pitfalls for trainees, and strategies to address them.     

Twelve tips for teaching medical students with dyslexia

Dyslexia is a common learning difficulty. As a result of SS’ own experiences as a medical student with dyslexia, we have been researching and teaching on this topic for the past two years. Here, we present twelve tips for teaching medical students with dyslexia. These are gathered from our personal experiences and research, discussions with other educators, and wider literature on the topic. This article aims to shed some light on dyslexia, and also to make practical suggestions. Teaching students with dyslexia should not be a daunting experience. Small changes to existing methods, at minor effort, can make a difference – for example, adding pastel colors to slide backgrounds or avoiding Serif fonts. These tips can help educators gain more insight into dyslexia and incorporate small, beneficial adaptations into their teaching.     

Twelve tips for medical teaching in low-resource settings

Teaching in a low-resource setting comes with its own challenges and pitfalls. Many concepts, ideas and strategies can be transferred but need to be adapted to the different environment. This article highlights some of the challenges and obstacles that healthcare professionals working in this setting might encounter when setting up an educational intervention. The following twelve specific tips are aimed toward individual healthcare workers, independent charities, and smaller non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who wish to initiate small-scale teaching projects or larger educational ventures. The article covers general matters to consider prior to embarking on this journey and includes cultural, educational, linguistic, and social aspects.     

Twelve tips for expanding undergraduate clinical teaching capacity

Undergraduate medical education has expanded substantially in recent years, through both establishing new programs and increasing student numbers in existing programs. This expansion has placed pressure on the capacity for training students in clinical placements, raising concerns about the risk of dilution of experience, and reducing work readiness. The concerns have been greatest in more traditional environments, where clinical placements in large academic medical centers are often the “gold standard”. However, there are ways of exposing medical students to patient interactions and clinical supervisors in many other contexts. In this paper, we share our experiences and observations of expanding clinical placements for both existing and new medical programs in several international locations. While this is not necessarily an easy task, a wide range of opportunities can be accessed by asking the right questions of the right people, often with only relatively modest changes in resource allocation.     

Twelve tips for just in time teaching of communication skills for difficult conversations in the clinical setting

The ability to communicate well with patients and other members of the healthcare team is a vital skill for physicians to have, but one that is often not emphasized in medical education. Learners of all levels can obtain and develop good communication skills regardless of their natural ability in this area, and the clinical setting represents an underutilized resource to accomplish this task. With this in mind, we have reviewed the growing body of literature on the subject and organized our findings into twelve tips to help educators capitalize on these missed opportunities. While our emphasis is helping learners with difficult discussions, these tips can be easily adapted to any other clinical encounter requiring clear communication. Teaching effective communication skills in the clinical setting requires some extra time, but the steps outlined should not take more than a few minutes to complete. Taking the time to develop these skills in our learners will make a significant difference not only their lives but also their patients and their families.     

Twelve tips for teaching about patients with cognitive impairment

The global population is ageing and consequently cognitive problems are increasingly prevalent. To ensure that the healthcare needs of this complex group are met, healthcare professionals must receive adequate training in this field. There are, however, a variety of reasons why this is not currently being achieved, including, but not limited to: ethical and logistical issues relating to the delivery of educational experiences involving cognitively impaired patients; a failure of curricula to keep pace with the changing demographic; societal and institutional ageism; and the inherent complexity of the conditions. This article highlights challenges associated with the delivery of such training to medical undergraduates and presents strategies to tackle these. Drawing on current evidence where available, the 12 tips below offer educators practical advice on how to maximize the value of medical undergraduates’ educational experiences with cognitively impaired patients.     

Twelve tips on choosing web teaching software

Experimentation with the new technology of web-based teaching has meant that many medical schools are using more than one software system for delivery. In the medical faculty at the University of New South Wales at the end of 1999, three different software packages (WebTeach, Top Class and Learning Space) were used for mediating teaching and learning on the web. The type of applications for which web-based teaching is used also varied widely. They ranged from a distance-education coursework masters programme delivered via the web, to the provision of additional resource materials and case discussions to supplement undergraduate classes on campus. Once web-based teaching moves out of the experimental phase and into the mainstream there is usually pressure to standardize on one software system. This has the advantage of limiting costs for training and support but it may require some compromise on functionality. Faced with the need to limit the number of software packages in use at UNSW the published comparisons of web software (Landon, 2001; University of California at Berkeley; 2001; Marshall University, 2001; Murdoch University, 2001) were first investigated. These show in broad terms what each package will do but often lack sufficient detail to determine whether the package will meet specific requirements. To get a better idea of how different software packages operate under the pressure of day-to-day teaching, 15 academic course coordinators, instructional designers and educational developers from six Australian universities who are involved in designing and delivering web courses were interviewed. The authors also joined online user groups and asked questions of international users. The aim was to find out what strengths and weaknesses they had found in the packages they used and whether they would make the same choice again. The authors were particularly interested to find out what questions they would ask when considering a new package. The twelve tips that follow summarize their advice to those considering the choice of a web teaching package.     

Twelve tips for running teaching programmes for newly qualified doctors

A teaching programme for newly qualified doctors is necessary for their continuing professional development and education. However, guidelines for the logistics and content of such teaching programmes are limited. These 12 tips provide advice and guidance for the creation and development of a successful programme. This article is intended for readers who are involved in teaching; programme directors, administrators, tutors and trainee doctors themselves. The principles included will also be useful for those involved in developing other types of teaching programmes. Engagement of trainees, the education department and other staff in the hospital is crucial for the success of teaching programmes. A culture of attendance and feedback may take time and effort to establish but is absolutely essential for long-term programme viability. Innovative approaches to teaching, a range of teaching staff and coverage of varied clinical and non-clinical topics, all contribute to a strong programme.