Why not leave teaching to enthusiastic clinical staff? A student's perspective

Dear Sir

As a medical student and skills laboratory instructor, I read the recent publication by O’Keefe et al. (2012) with great interest. The article highlights suggestions for improvement of student learning in multidisciplinary clinical environments, and on these, I would like to offer the perspective of a consumer of undergraduate education.

Clinicians have three major responsibilities: patient care, research, and teaching. However, as the authors pointed out, “whilst education is the major focus of university programs, it is not the major priority for many staff in clinical settings”. Workload and resource restrictions render effective teaching difficult, and this is usually accepted by students. Little teaching motivation on behalf of clinicians, on the other hand, is hard to accept, as effective learning requires educators both to challenge and support students (“Support active learning in students”).

But, how can universities ensure the best clinical education in today's outcome-oriented life? One possible solution is to integrate medical students in multidisciplinary teams, as they will be later in their careers (“Encourage students to learn from other healthcare professionals”). Yet, universities predominantly implement a discipline-oriented approach (O'Keefe et al., 2012). Although the reasoning behind is understandable, I beg to argue that students value every kind of teaching as long as it is constructive, helpful, and well-founded. An experienced nurse may offer just as much clinical expertise as a FY1 doctor.

Research is an important part of clinicians’ work. However, I have gained the impression that successful researchers are sometimes valued over enthusiastic clinical teachers. Research success is easy to quantify whereas teaching quality may be not, particularly not objectively (Katarey 2012). This per se holds true, but that is where students again come into play. Courses are evaluated regularly, and who is better to judge a teacher's performance than participating students? I, therefore, propose that universities should systematically identify qualified educators – based in part on student evaluations – and support this important clinical sub-population with the same resources as research staff.

And, what enables clinical teachers to be good at their craft? In this student's opinion, it is as Steve Jobs once put it, “The only way to do great work is to love what you do” (Stanford News Service 2005).