Comparison of volunteer and full‐time faculty performance in a required third‐year family medicine clerkship

Abstract

The increased number of required family medicine clerkships has created the need for more qualified faculty to serve as preceptors. One solution to the faculty shortage is to use volunteer faculty practicing in the private setting. This article describes how volunteer faculty at one institution were selected and trained and compares the performance of volunteer and full‐time faculty using several parameters. Student perception of their level of involvement in patient care activities was comparable between private practices and the university site. Students also rated general teaching skills of volunteer and full‐time faculty similarly. However, students placed at private practices felt less confident about their acquisition of fundamental clinical skills than did students placed at the university site, and volunteer faculty tended to grade more leniently than did full‐time faculty. In general, however, we conclude that volunteer faculty, properly selected and trained, can be a useful and valuable resource in undergraduate family medicine education.