Valuing Teaching

An outstanding article appeared recently in the "New Physician" journal from the American Medical Association. It sort of summarizes my frustration with the education I've witnessed here and heard about for years. But here at a "teaching" institution with minimal research, and publication pressures on faculty, I expected different. But what I realize is that school administrators and instructors who are not now, and have never been educated in "teaching" don't even know where to start. The classroom in medical school IS the "last frontier" in need of change.

MEDICAL EDUCATION VS. MEDICAL EDUCATORS

After 100 years of bold strokes, improving the training of medicine’s teachers still requires investment
The New Physician, January-February 2009  by Pete Thomson - Volume 58, Issue 1

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“Revolutionary would be if a medical school succeeded in truly valuing the teaching mission.” -Dr. Kenneth Ludmerer

**"...one element of medical education only recently began to change, and it may not change much more without support from medical schools themselves and an attitudinal shift in physician culture. That element is the recognition and promotion of teaching skill in the medical school classroom."

**“What would be revolutionary would be if a medical school succeeded in truly valuing the teaching mission.”

**"Generations of medical school faculty and administrators have held to the idea that teaching as an art is a waste..."

**"...the delusion that knowledge of subject matter automatically makes a good teacher...At the higher-education level, very few faculty are really taught how to teach."

**"...we have an obligation and responsibility to prepare our teachers to teach.”

**"...medical students are medical school consumers and, as such, are entitled to demand great teachers and great teaching. But excellence in medical teaching matters the most to the ultimate consumer: the patient population."

**"...medical education has a lot to learn about teaching..."

Nuff said...just nice to hear someone else say it.