The Pedagogic Characteristics of a Clinical Conference for Senior Residents and Faculty

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Abstract
Objective: To determine the pedagogic characteristics of a clinical conference for senior pediatric residents and selected faculty. Participants and Setting: Nineteen senior pediatric residents and 14 selected faculty members participated in a daily clinical conference at Children's Hospital, Boston, Mass. Design: Qualitative research design using videotapes of nine consecutive hour-long sessions to generate pedagogic topics to be investigated using a questionnaire administered to participating residents and faculty. Narrative responses were analyzed to find pedagogic themes. Results: Analysis of videotapes generated the following three topics: What facilitated learning? What was learned? What makes the process of teaching and learning effective? In the questionnaire resients indicated that learning was facilitated by resident-faculty interactions (19/19), faculty participation (19/19), and information resources (12/19). Content learned included information (16/19), approach to diagnosis (11/19), management strategies (14/19), and different perspective (14/19). An effective process of teaching and learning was attributed to case-based resident initiated discussion (19/19), facilitation by the chief resident (16/19), and non-competitive discussions in which expert faculty played a nondominant role (19/19). Faculty identified identical factors relating to all three themes. The mean rating of the of the conference was 4.5/5 (SD, ±0.50) and 4.7/5 (SD, ±0.45) by residents and faculty, respectively (Likert scale, 1 to 5). Conclusions: The pedagogic effectiveness of this conference was attributed to a resident-centered, casebased learning format and a discussion process characterized by noncompetitive interactions among faculty and residents, strong group facilitation by the chief resident, and participation of faculty experts in a nondominant role. (Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1995;149:1023-1028)