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Open Access Education Materials

The open access, online resources provided here have been peer-reviewed by FAME members to help you develop as a clinical educator. If you would like to propose additional free and open-access resources for inclusion on this page, please email your suggestion to FAME@northwestern.edu with a brief explanation of why you find the resource useful.

External Resources for Educators

 Learning Conversations (Feedback & Debriefing)

Resource Title Resource Type Description

Feedback 2 Learn

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This free open access resource collates many resources related to healthcare debriefing and includes free PDF's, podcasts and blog posts.

Facilitated Feedback Conversations: the R2C2 Model

 

Provides a helpful and evidence-based overview and structure for feedback conversations that occur during annual or biannual reviews

Giving Effective Feedback: A Faculty Development Online Module and Workshop

 

This is an excellent resource includes downloadable videos to teach faculty how to give feedback. It also provides pocket cards that can be used as reminders about how to give feedback. Includes topics such as goal setting and student presentations

Struggling Medical Learners

Dealing with difficult learner behaviors

Conflict Resolution in Medicine

 

These modules provide valuable information on dealing with challenging educational situations.

Giving Feedback and Receiving Feedback

Part 1: Giving feedback

Part 2: Receiving feedback

 

These two blog posts from the International Clinical Educators Blog are brief, high-yield, and easy to digest for the busy clinician. Part 1 briefly reviews a 6-step feedback formula and Part 2 reviews how to approach this same process from the trainee perspective.

Workshop on Giving, Receiving, and Soliciting Feedback

 

This resource focuses on how to give, receive, and solicit feedback. The authors include a PDF summary: “The Fine Art of Feedback Synopsis Brochure” reviews giving, receiving, and soliciting feedback both from the receiver and sender perspectives.

Residents as Educators: Giving Feedback

 

Although this was originally created for residents/fellows to give feedback to medical students, the overall concepts of giving feedback apply for all educators. The online resource contains brief two PowerPoint presentations and bullet points on high yield aspects of effective feedback.

Giving feedback: videos on giving feedback from Harvard Medical School Academy

 

Under EDUCATIONAL APPROACHES AND RESOURCES, you will see VIDEO SERIES: IMPROVING FEEDBACK. These brief videos clearly delineate different styles with their potential advantages and disadvantages.

 Curriculum Development

Resource Title Description

Introduction to Curriculum Development

An overview on curriculum development based on Kern’s 6-step model

Designing and Delivering an Effective Lesson

This curriculum from MedEd Portal can be downloaded and teaches the steps to write objectives, plan a delivery method, and choose a method of assessment.

Bloom’s Taxonomy in Action to write Learning Objectives

Developing Meaningful Learning Objectives

Concrete guidance on writing learning objectives
Effective Instructional Strategies This video is geared more toward developing teaching methods for young students (not in medicine), but the principles behind how to teach and provides a step by step approach to developing a curriculum that is applicable to a broad audience. You must be on a Northwestern University network to view this resource.

 Assessment

Resource Title Description

NEJM Knowledge+ Article About ACGME Competencies

This short article provides an overview of ACGME competencies; you can choose to investigate further through hyperlinks within the body of the text if you wish.

Educational Measurement Workshop

These modules provide an overview about the basics of educational measurement.

Introduction to Entrustable Professional Activities Faculty Development Module

Online Module

This resource about entrustable professional activities (EPAs) includes downloadable PDFs and a Word document explaining the module. The online module can easily be accessed directly through the link. This module is for faculty learning to evaluate EPAs for third- and fourth-year medical students. You can also translate lesson to resident and fellow assessment. The important takeaways is learning what EPAs are and seeing practical their applications.

Milestones and Entrustable Professional Activities

EPAs Part 1: What are they?

EPAs Part 2: How they’re used and ABS plans

EPAs Part 3: What do they mean for you?

These three brief YouTube videos (< 2min) describe entrustable professional activities (EPAs). These pertain specifically to General Surgery – using examples of pilot EPAs in General Surgery, however they are useful for anyone who wants a brief, digestible overview of what EPAs are and how they can potentially be used.

 Active Learning Strategies

Resource Title Description

Questions as a Tool in Clinical Teaching

This module highlights the use of questions as a non-intimidating way to promote critical thinking.

The University of Arizona Health Sciences Inquiry Strategy for Teaching

This site contains a brief 3-minute video on inquiry teaching and delves into different questioning styles based on what you are trying to assess from your learner.

BDA: A Framework for Reflective Teaching in Clinical Settings

This brief 3-minute video reviews the BDA (before, during, after) framework for clinical teaching. Educators may find this most helpful as a review prior to bedside teaching with a small group of learners.

Teaching Clinical Reasoning to Medical Students: A Case-Based Illness Script Worksheet Approach

Use the this MedEd Portal resource for a framework to teach clinical reasoning skills.

Small Group Facilitation

A series of articles from the Florida State University College of Medicine about small group facilitation and learning. “Lessons from Geese” and “The Developmental Facilitator: What One is and What One Does” are particularly high-yield.

Six Common Non-facilitating Teaching Behaviors

This article highlights common educator behaviors that are NOT helpful to teaching and learning in small and large groups. Awareness about these common yet unhelpful behaviors may add new and valuable insight for educators.

Team Based Learning

Podcast

This post on the popular Academic Life in Emergency Medicine blog highlights some key points from a 2016 article on Team-Based Learning published in the Journal of Graduate Medical Education. In addition to summarizing the article, the post includes a 32-minute video of medical educators discussing this topic (this discussion is also available as a podcast).

 Learning Environments

Resource Title Description

Safe Space Training for LGBT Medical Students

An overview of safe space training

 Medical Education Scholarship

Resource Title Description

Health Professions Education Journals


Journal options for publishing health professions education articles.

 Covers All Categories

Resource Title Description

Educational Theory Made Practical

This free ebook produced by the Academic Life in Emergency Medicine team reviews various components of education theory in succinct, case-based, freely-available chapters. Topics include: curriculum design, writing learning objectives, reflective practice and decision-making to name a few.

KeyLIME Podcasts

The KeyLIME (Key Literature in Medical Education) podcasts provide brief (~ 30 minute) podcasts focusing on a variety of medical education topics. Each podcast reviews a recent medical education article and provides key take home points for clinical educators.

The International Clinical Educators (ICE) Blog from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada

The ICE Network Blog hosts a multitude of education resources that is easily searchable for topics of interest.

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