Improving Teaching and Learning in Clinical Medicine

The Stanford Faculty Development Program has successfully trained physicians for their tasks as clinical teachers in medical education. This program, based on seven educational categories, organizes the teaching process into a structure which then focuses attention on specific behaviors teachers can utilize to adapt their teaching for a wide variety of learners in many different settings. Experimental studies support this program’s effectiveness and suggest that if we are more thoughtful about how we teach and how we prepare others to teach, we will be more assured of enhancing medical education for all of our learners.