Improvement of teaching skills in a clinical setting.

The article describes the efforts of the faculty members in the Department of Community Medicine at the Rockford School of Medicine to improve their clinical teaching skills in the Primary Care Experience (formerly the Basic Ambulatory Experience). Faculty members opted for an instructional development program under the direction of an educational consultant as a result of their problems with clinical teaching in a new medical school. Each faculty member's teaching was videotaped and analyzed by the consultant, who met with the instructor to discuss the videotape, From this initial discussion problem areas were defined to be discussed at large group meetings. Faculty members will be videotaped in the present academic year to ascertain improvement in their clinical teaching.