Excel in clinical teaching: Principles and strategies

Clinical teaching plays an important role in the medical education effectively based on the principles of educational psychology. Through understanding of five major elements of adult learning and cognitive development, we will be able to apply them to clinical teaching. To achieve the clinical teaching affectivity we need to follow the below principles: covering both patient management and teaching encouraging participation, using open-ended questions, enforcing clinical problem solving ability, practicing based on evidence-based, and accomplishing and evaluating result. We further discuss the importance of bedside teaching, and principles of achieving successful bedside teaching. They include the following: patient-centered, respect of patient's comfort and dignitary, employment of problem-oriented teaching skills, competency-based psychomotor skills teaching, giving feed-back and model professionalism. The good clinical teaching will help both teacher and learner to improve their future performance in medicine.

Duke Scholars

Author Andrew T. Huang Medicine, Hematologic Malignancies and Cellular Therapy