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Context and setting Learning in the clinical environment differs from learning in other settings. By contrast with structured teaching, informal teaching interactions are predominant, especially among colleagues with small differences in knowledge and experience, making peer teaching one cornerstone of clinical medicine learning. However, most students and residents feel uncomfortable teaching their peers because they often lack the necessary teaching skills and approach. Why the idea was necessary In the context of reflection around student autonomy, a group of medical students underlined the importance of peer teaching in clinical learning and proposed to create a teaching skills programme directed at peers. Their purpose was to introduce and provide students with simple tools to enhance informal peer teaching and learning in real clinical practice, taking into account the limitations and stress induced by this professional environment. As students will be future residents, it is hoped that preparing them to be skilled peer teachers would later reinforce their role as preceptors and their self-esteem in an often difficult period of their career, and would improve their teaching and communication skills. What was done With the help of strong faculty support and commitment, the students gathered a teaching team with various levels of experience (from student to professor) and profiles (internist, surgeon, anaesthesiologist, nurse, psychologist and medical educator). Students and faculty members developed and taught the programme. It started with a compulsory introduction forum entitled ‘How to best profit from your clerkships’, which was followed by an elective programme of five 2-hour interactive workshops addressing the following six themes: one-to-one peer teaching; training in procedural skills; giving feedback; orienting peers in a new clinical environment; interprofessional communication, and reflective practice based on logbook recordings. The programme ended with a formative assessment against predefined criteria during a simulated teaching interaction with a ‘standardised peer’. The programme evaluation was based on students’ ratings on a 12-item questionnaire (global evaluation, objectives, expectations, usefulness, format, etc.) and their oral feedback at the end of the course. Evaluation of results and impact We implemented the programme in 2006–07 with 16 elective Year 4 students in a 6-year curriculum. All of them successfully reached the predetermined performance levels and impressed examiners during their interactions with standardised peers. Students expressed high levels of satisfaction, both during the oral feedback session and in the evaluation questionnaire (mean range among the tested dimensions 4.1 standard deviation, SD 0.26 to 4.8 SD 0.45, on a Likert scale of 1–5, 5 being the highest level). Our first experience was thus encouraging and we are currently offering the programme for a second year, during which three former students have become coaches for the new students. In conclusion, students successfully initiated an undergraduate elective programme providing tools for peer teaching in real clinical practice. Its potential impact on preparing future residents’ teaching skills requires further research.
Merglen et al. (Tue,) studied this question.