THE PEDAGOGIC CHARACTERISTICS OF A CLINICAL CONFERENCE FOR SENIOR RESIDENTS AND FACULTY

Objective: To determine the pedagogic characteristics of a clinical co nference for senior pediatric residents and selected faculty. Particip ants and Setting: Nineteen senior pediatric residents and 14 selected faculty members participated in a daily clinical conference at Childre n's Hospital, Boston, Mass. Design: Qualitative research design using video tapes of nine consecutive hour-long sessions to generate pedagog ic topics to be investigated using a questionnaire administered to par ticipating 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! W hat makes the process of teaching and learning effective? In the quest ionnaire resients indicated that learning was facilitated by resident- faculty interactions (19/19), faculty participation (19/19), and infor mation resources (12/19). Content learned included information (16/19) , approach to diagnosis (11/19), management strategies (14/19), and di fferent perspective (14/19). An effective process of teaching and lear ning was attributed to case-based resident initiated discussion (19/19 ), facilitation by the chief resident (16/19), and noncompetitive disc ussions in which expert faculty played a nondominant role (19/19). Fac ulty identified identical factors relating to all three themes. The me an 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 wa s attributed to a resident-centered, case-based learning format and a discussion process characterized toy noncompetitive interactions among faculty and residents, strong group facilitation by the chief residen t, and participation of faculty experts in a nondominant role.