Surgical teaching quality makes a difference.
BACKGROUND
This study examined the influence of the quality of faculty members' teaching on student performance in a third-year surgery clerkship.


METHODS
Eighty-nine third-year students on a surgery clerkship completed preceptor evaluation forms. The faculty member's overall score was the mean of ratings from all the third-year students for whom that faculty member served as preceptor during the year. We examined associations between these ratings and student performance on the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) surgery subject examination and clerkship Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) by using an analysis of covariance that controlled for prior academic achievement [United States Medical Licensure Examination (USMLE) Part I].


RESULTS
The average mean teaching evaluation score was associated with the scores on the NBME surgery subject examination (P = 0.0005). Students with attendings who received poor teaching evaluations performed more poorly on OSCE data-gathering stations than did students with attendings rated as average or good.


CONCLUSIONS
The study results indicate that the teaching quality of surgery faculty appears to have an impact on student performance.
Blue
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AV
Department of Family Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina College of Medicine, Charleston 29425-2201, USA.
Griffith
C H
CH
Wilson
J
J
Sloan
D A
DA
Schwartz
R W
RW
D000328:Adult; D002982:Clinical Clerkship; D002983:Clinical Competence; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005180:Faculty, Medical; D005260:Female; D013502:General Surgery / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D008007:Licensure, Medical; D008297:Male; D011231:Preceptorship; D018794:Problem-Based Learning; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D013044:Specialty Boards; D013663:Teaching