The value of bedside teaching in undergraduate medical education: a literature review

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Background: Bedside teaching used to be an integral component of undergraduate medical education. In recent times, however, there has been a steady decline in the use of bedside teaching. This has occurred despite students, clinicians and patients viewing bedside teaching as valuable. Aims: This review aims to appraise the current literature surrounding the perspectives in bedside teaching and evaluate its role within modern medical education. Methods: A literature search was conducted in PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Ovid to identify appropriate studies. The journal articles were obtained by conducting sensitive and appropriate searches using keywords. All studies were examined comprehensively by the authors for suitability for inclusion. Results: 2,770 records were identified from the initial search. An additional 3 records were identified after discussion with experts in the field. 583 duplicates were identified in the pool of records initially sourced. Of the remaining 2,190 records, 1,930 were excluded after inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied to their titles and abstracts. A further 252 records were excluded from the remaining 260 records after inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied to their full-texts. The remaining eight articles were reviewed by both authors and were deemed suitable for inclusion to the review. Conclusion: The review showed that there is evidence in the literature to show that students, clinicians, and patients regard bedside teaching as beneficial. Discussions highlighted that bedside teaching can aid competency-based education models and cannot be replaced by simulation-based education. These results illustrate that, while there is evidence to show that bedside teaching holds value in medical education today, further studies should be conducted aiming to display long-term outcomes of bedside teaching.