Nearly 250 resident physicians from across the community teach UCF medical students in their third- and fourth-year clerkships. And this year, the medical school’s Faculty Development team has begun a new program to help train these busy residents in their role as teachers.
On September 30, the team unveiled the new program called CATCH (Catch A Teaching Chance Here) to 20 internal medicine residents at Florida Hospital. Future training will occur this fall for residents in other specialties at Florida Hospital, Orlando Health and UCF’s new partnership internal medicine program with Osceola Regional Medical Center and the Orlando VA Medical Center.
Residents are themselves students – receiving graduate medical education in clinics and hospitals after their graduation from medical school. But they also have primary responsibility for teaching medical students during their clerkship rotations in specialties like OB-GYN, surgery, internal medicine and pediatrics.
Typically residents are trained in topics like providing feedback, bedside teaching and evaluating students through didactic methods. But UCF’s CATCH program is designed to engage residents in the development of the curriculum by asking them to create scenarios that incorporate key moments that can happen on any given day as an opportunity to provide feedback and real-world information.
As part of the new CATCH training, residents write stories with real-life plots and characters that highlight these moments on the wards. The College of Medicine Faculty Development team then uses the stories to produce real-life teaching videos for future sessions. Several Resident as Teacher programs nationwide use videos to elicit reflection and discussion among residents. However, UCF is the first program to use scenarios that are actually written by residents.
“Because the videos reflect actual student-resident encounters in the hospital setting, they are much more relevant and useful to identify teaching moments,” said Andrea Berry, director of faculty development who is part of the Resident as Teacher program.
During their first CATCH sessions, the Florida Hospital internal medicine residents talked about the importance of building relationships with students to create a positive learning environment that encourages feedback. Several residents talked about the importance of ensuring a student understands the expectations for each patient they are helping. The Resident as Teacher sessions last one hour and are offered as part of a five-session series delivered to all residents who educate UCF medical students.
For more information about faculty development.