Within the Student, Resident, Faculty and Peer Evaluation of Teaching sections of my portfolio, I have included some reflections on what I have learned from these evaluations. Additionally, while summarizing my teaching responsibilities, I included a teaching log of my activities in undergraduate medical education as a means of self-reflection, whilst also mentioning my reflections on clinical teaching in the undergraduate and postgraduate medical education sections.

 

I do believe that adult learners generally want to be engaged in relevant and meaningful activities, especially those that match their preferred learning styles. I also believe that the philosophical and theoretical assumptions that teachers and learners make often lead to differing perceptions of shared experiences. As an educator, it is important to remember this, in order to temper unrealistic expectations of being able to please every learner simultaneously.

 

In the clinical setting, I am more likely to achieve my goals as an educator, where a humanistic and progressive philosophy serves learners well. I try to provide residents and medical students progressively increased responsibility and both clinically and personally relevant material, while making specific inquiries, interactions, and challenges arising from patient care into teachable moments. By taking the time to get to know my learners as individuals, and helping them formulate and achieve their own goals with my guidance, most have been appreciative of this approach and of this strategy. Most have also really appreciated my owned, direct and regular feedback on their progress, with specific suggestions and resources to help them improve.

 

Where this strategy is less successful, however, is when the learner only considers traditional teaching methods as constituting education, and ignores the value of experiential learning. I also still have days where I struggle with delegation and balancing multiple roles, usually when days are extremely busy, and consequently, I stay at work later to ensure education and clinical work has been achieved. While students do not complain, it can adversely affect my enthusiasm because my life outside of medicine suffers, including time spent with family and extracurricular interests. Solutions likely lie in better delegation, accepting less time on some days for specific teaching topics in the interest of time, and encouraging learners more to seek out the appropriate supporting information on their own, particularly when the questions are non-urgent and related to their assigned responsibilities. I have been a strong believer in working and bedside rounds as a way of efficiently and simultaneously addressing clinical care while providing direct supervision and feedback to learners, and am trying to find ways to make that happen for the gastroenterology service. Finally, while I am a strong believer in self-reflection, I do not encourage this enough in the learner, and so I should make a point of asking the learner what weaknesses they would like me to observe for and provide guidance on for the duration of our time on service together.

 

I have also talked a fair bit about the challenges of providing thorough but concise presentations, but think I will be better served going forwards with implementation of a flipped classroom design. It fits best with my desire to create engaging lectures challenging higher-order cognitive skills. The corollary, however, is that less classroom time is spent on basic concepts that I have a tendency to present too thoroughly. The challenge is ensuring that within 10-15 minute podcasts, I can deliver the necessary background information, and that I still use classroom time to explain or elaborate on more difficult concepts that may provide a better foundation for practical knowledge application. This ability to simplify or organize key concepts is a skill of mine upon external and self-reflection, and is thus something I should be bringing to classroom sessions as an educator.