Abstract
ABSTRACT Background: Physician educators directing medical student programs face increasingly more complex challenges to ensure students receive appropriate preparation to care for patients. The Alliance for Clinical Education (ACE) defined expectations of and for clerkship directors in 2003. Since then, much has changed in medical education and health care. Methods: ACE conducted a panel discussion at the 2016 Association of American Medical Colleges Learn Serve Lead conference, soliciting input on these expectations and the changing roles of clerkship directors. Using workshops as a cross-sectional study design, participants reacted to roles and responsibilities of clerkship directors identified in the literature using an audience response system and completing worksheets. Results: The participants represented different disciplines of medicine and ranged from clerkship directors to deans of curriculum. Essential clerkship director qualifications identified by participants included: enthusiasm, experience teaching, and clinical expertise. Essential tasks included grading and assessment and attention to accreditation standards. Participants felt clerkship directors need adequate resources, including budget oversight, full-time clerkship support, and dedicated time to be the clerkship director. To whom clerkship directors report was mixed. Clerkship directors look to their chair for career advice, and they also report to the dean to ensure educational standards are being met. Expectations to meet accreditation standards and provide exemplary educational experiences can be difficult to achieve if clerkship directors’ time and resources are limited. Conclusions: Participant responses indicated the need for a strong partnership between department chairs and the dean’s office so that clerkship directors can fulfill their responsibilities. Our results indicate a need to ensure clerkship directors have the time and resources necessary to manage clinical medical student education in an increasingly complex health care environment. Further studies need to be conducted to obtain more precise data on the true amount of time they are given to do that role.
Highlights
Educating students during the clinical phase of undergraduate medical education has become increasingly complex due to various medical school curricular changes, including the shortening of many disciplinespecific clinical placements, new areas of curricular focus, changes in health care delivery systems, and numerous additional or revised accreditation requirements [1,2]
The Alliance for Clinical Education (ACE) is an organization comprised of representatives from eight clerkship organizations representing emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, neurology, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, psychiatry, and surgery
Thirty-four respondents reported no association with a specialty organization or did not respond, but the rest were distributed amongst the member organizations in ACE: pediatrics (n = 6), internal medicine (n = 6), family medicine (n = 5), obstetrics/gynecology (n = 4), surgery (n = 3), psychiatry (n = 2), neurology (n = 1) and emergency medicine (n = 1)
Summary
Educating students during the clinical phase of undergraduate medical education has become increasingly complex due to various medical school curricular changes, including the shortening of many disciplinespecific clinical placements ( referred to as clerkships), new areas of curricular focus, changes in health care delivery systems, and numerous additional or revised accreditation requirements [1,2]. The Alliance for Clinical Education (ACE) defined expectations of and for clerkship directors in 2003. Methods: ACE conducted a panel discussion at the 2016 Association of American Medical Colleges Learn Serve Lead conference, soliciting input on these expectations and the changing roles of clerkship directors. Essential clerkship director qualifications identified by participants included: enthusiasm, experience teaching, and clinical expertise. Clerkship directors look to their chair for career advice, and they report to the dean to ensure educational standards are being met. Expectations to meet accreditation standards and provide exemplary educational experiences can be difficult to achieve if clerkship directors’ time and resources are limited. Our results indicate a need to ensure clerkship directors have the time and resources necessary to manage clinical medical student education in an increasingly complex health care environment. Further studies need to be conducted to obtain more precise data on the true amount of time they are given to do that role
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