title: Fellows as Teachers: Raising the Educational Bar.
abstract: Fellows are expected to educate trainees, peers, and patients, during and long after fellowship. However, there has been relatively little emphasis on the acquisition of teaching skills in fellowship programs. Challenges to teaching by fellows during subspecialty training include demanding clinical duties, their limited knowledge base in the field, brief contact time with learners during consultative roles, and, for new fellows, personal unfamiliarity with the learners and hospital culture. Fellows' teaching skills can be improved by formal curricula addressing teaching, and by direct observation and feedback of teaching akin to what is provided for learning clinical care. Further expansion of fellow-as-teacher programs will allow in-depth training for fellows seeking careers as medical educators. Even without such dedicated programs, emphasis on honing teaching skills during fellowship will telegraph the importance of teaching and help evolve divisional culture. Such efforts can have a positive impact on patients and learners, and enhance the teaching skills of future faculty.
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Medicine, Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
authors.forename: Eli M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Miloslavsky
authors.affiliation: 2 Division of Respiratory Diseases, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
authors.forename: Debra
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Boyer
authors.affiliation: 3 Division of General Pediatrics, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
authors.forename: Ariel S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Winn
authors.affiliation: 4 Division of Endocrinology, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
authors.forename: Diane E J
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Stafford
authors.affiliation: 5 Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, and.|6 Carl J. Shapiro Institute for Education and Research, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts.
authors.forename: Jakob I
authors.initials: JI
authors.lastname: McSparron
mesh_terms: D002321:Career Choice; D003479:Curriculum / Q000592:standards*; D004501:Education, Medical / Q000379:methods*; D005257:Fellowships and Scholarships; D006801:Humans; D013663:Teaching / Q000592:standards*
keywords: education; fellowship; teaching; training