Volume 4, Number 44Nov. 3, 2000

Teaching in Your Office: A Guide to Instructing Medical Students and Residents

Community-based training, the keystone of the WWAMI Program, is becoming the standard for medical student and resident education nationwide. A new book, Teaching in Your Office: A Guide to Instructing Medical Students and Residents (American College of Physicians, Philadelphia, 2001, 145 pp), shows community physicians how to become more effective clinical teachers.

Preceptors and students face many challenges in balancing productivity and efficiency with quality clinical education. Teaching in Your Office covers core teaching skills, gives examples of good and bad approaches to common preceptor/student interactions, such as offering criticism, and contains tips for maximizing instruction time.

Two of the authors are UW physicians and educators: Dawn DeWitt and Linda Pinsky, both assistant professors of medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine.

DeWitt is the director of WWAMI Regional Community-Based Education in Internal Medicine and general internal medicine liaison with the Rural/Underserved Opportunities Program. Pinsky, director of ambulatory resident education at UWMC-Roosevelt, received the 1999 National Award for Innovation in Medical Education from the Society of General Internal Medicine.

Their co-authors are Patrick C. Alguire, director of education at the American College of Physicians, and a member of the National General Internal Medicine Faculty Development Project Leadership Group, and Gary S. Ferenchick of the Department of Medicine at Michigan State.