title: What makes a competent clinical teacher?
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Clinical teaching competency is a professional necessity ensuring that clinicians' knowledge, skills and attitudes are effectively transmitted from experts to novices. The aim of this paper is to consider how clinical skills are transmitted from a historical and reflective perspective and to link these ideas with student and teacher perceptions of competence in clinical teaching.
  
  
  METHODS
  The reflections are informed by a Delphi process and professional development survey designed to capture students' and clinicians' ideas about the attributes of a competent clinical teacher. In addition, the survey process obtained information on the importance and 'teachability' of these characteristics.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Four key characteristics of the competent teacher emerged from the Delphi process: clinically competent, efficient organizer, group communicator and person-centred. In a subsequent survey, students were found to be more optimistic about the 'teachability' of these characteristics than clinicians and scored the attribute of person-centredness higher than clinicians. Clinicians, on the other hand, ascribed higher levels of importance to clinical competency, efficient organization and group communication than students.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The Delphi process created a non-threatening system for gathering student and clinician expectations of teachers and created a foundation for developing methods for evaluating clinical competency. This provided insights into differences between teachers' and students' expectations, their importance, and professional development.
authors.affiliation: Medical Education Development Office, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wealthall
authors.affiliation: Centre for Medical and Health Sciences Education, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Marcus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Henning