Clinical Educator Track Resident Programs: Lessons Learned From Innovative Programs

Background

Medical education is currently comprised of three areas: undergraduate, postgraduate and the continuing professional development of established clinicians; however, this was not always the case (Swanwick, 2014). In the 19th century, medical education in the U.S.A. took place in small “proprietary schools with limited facilities, few formal requirements, and little academic content” (Barchi & Lowery, 2000, p. 899); however, by the turn of the 20^th century, medical schools had established four-year formalized training programs with clinical requirements. The required clinical component of medical schools primarily fell on practicing physicians who taught residents in an apprentice-type model. Many practicing physicians reported increase workloads and longer hours as they maintained their patient loads and taught residents, and they were not compensated for their additional role and responsibilities (McCullough, Marton, Ramnanan, 2015). Consequently, many of these physicians chose not to engage or continue as clinical educators. As medical schools found it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain physicians willing to teach students and residents, clinical educator track programs emerged (Kubiak, Guidot, Trimm, Kamen, & Roman, 2012). Clinical educator track programs typically place more emphasis on preparing residents for teaching and clinical skills. Over the past three decades, clinician-educators have become critical to the success of medical education (Barchi & Lowery, 2000; Levinson & Rubenstein, 2000; Lin et al., 2016), and as such, clinical-educator tracks have become equally important.