Improving residents' teaching skills and attitudes toward teaching.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether a short, 3-hour teaching skills workshop could improve residents' teaching performances and attitudes toward teaching. DESIGN: Controlled study. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: Forty-four second- and third-year residents in a university-based internal medicine residency program. INTERVENTIONS: Twenty-two residents were assigned to a nonparticipant (control) group, and 22 residents were assigned to a 3-hour teaching skills workshop designed to help them establish a positive learning climate and provide effective feedback to medical students. MEASUREMENTS: Questionnaires completed by medical students and residents that measured the residents' abilities to establish a positive learning climate and provide feedback, their overall teaching skills, and their attitudes toward teaching. RESULTS: Four months after the workshop intervention, workshop participants improved their learning climate and feedback according to student evaluations (p = .02, p = .001, respectively) and resident self-assessments (p = .002, p = .01, respectively) compared with nonparticipants. Overall teaching skills were not significantly changed (p = .20 for student evaluation and p = .09 for self-assessments). Workshop participants also gained more confidence in their teaching (p = .001), and adopted more learner-centered approaches to teaching than did nonparticipants. CONCLUSIONS: A 3-hour instructional workshop is a feasible and effective method to help residents improve their teaching skills, their confidence in teaching, and the approaches they use to teach medical students on the wards.