Characteristics of Good Clinical Educators from Medical Students’ Perspectives: A Qualitative Inquiry using a Web-Based Survey System

Abstract

Medical educators have a unique role in teaching students how to save lives and give comfort during illness. This article reports a qualitative inquiry into medical students perspectives on the key qualities which differentiate excellent and poor clinical teachers, using a Web-based questionnaire with a purposeful sample of third- and fourth-year medical students. Thirty-seven medical students responded with 465 characteristics and supportive anecdotes. All participants responses were analyzed through reviewing, coding, member checking, recoding and content analysis, which yielded 12 codes. Responses from 5 randomly chosen participants were recoded by two authors with an inter-rater reliability coefficient of 0.72, implying agreement. Finally, 3 larger categories emerged from the data: Content Competence, Teaching Mechanics, and Teaching Dynamics. We incorporate these codes into a diagrammatic model of a good clinical teacher, discuss the relationships and interactions between the codes and categories, and suggest further areas of research.