First Year Medical Student’s Viewpoint Regarding Qualities of an Excellent Teacher

Abstract

In the academia, the qualities of excellent teacher are related to personal traits, effective teaching technique, and interpersonal communication of teacher. A qualitative research was conducted to identify the characteristics of a good clinical teacher as perceived by first year medical students at Allama Iqbal Medical College, Lahore, Pakistan from May, 2015 to July, 2015. Twenty five medical students were asked to express their opinion freely about qualities of teacher whom they think qualifies him/her as an excellent teacher and what specifically makes his/her lectures so effective according to their perceptions. Phenomenological approach was used to investigate medical students’ experiences and their interpretations of the excellent teacher. Several key analytic strategies were used such as ‘Coding’, for both categorizing qualitative data and describing the connotation and details of these categories. Two major themes that an excellent teacher should possess were personal qualities and presentation skills from which 15 sub-themes were identified .The study concluded that first year medical students think that an excellent teacher should not only possess personal characteristics and qualities like good moral character, empathy and sympathy but he should also exhibit excellent skills in lecture delivery, ability to organize lectures and its contents.