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Clinician Educator Core Teaching Skills

Goal:
To improve the education of medical students and other trainees by providing faculty clinician educators with flexibly-accessed resources on core teaching skills in the most important and most requested domains
 
Background/Scope:
Faculty educators are busy, but care about teaching.  In this UPSOM faculty development initiative, multiple offices/groups have joined forces to create a tiered approach to help faculty learn or master skills essential for the education of medical students.  A needs assessment was conducted in 2026 that outlined educational skills most needed and desired, including:
 
  • Orienting learners: helping new students understand their roles on clinical teams, fostering a sense of inclusion and purpose
  • Giving feedback:  providing actionable, specific, and timely behavioral guidance to improve learner performance, with appropriate follow-up and monitoring
  • Assessment:  providing valid and unbiased performance assessment including narrative, focusing on objective behaviors, in a reliable way
  • Safe learning environment:  creating an environment of psychological safety that models professional behaviors and reduces the possibility of learner mistreatment
 
Faculty who have intermittent roles in education (e.g., a clinical preceptor at an ambulatory site who works with clerkship students a few days monthly) may only need basic reminders about these skills.  Faculty with routine medical student teaching (e.g., teaching attending on an inpatient service with multiple students daily), or those with leadership roles, may benefit from a deeper dive into skills. 
 
UPSOM faculty development leaders have collated a list of key resources in these four domains that can benefit a variety of faculty, in a variety of situations.  
 
Skill Domain 
On the Fly 
(<15min) 
Orienting Learners 
(University of California-Riverside Resource) 
 
(Kaweah Health Resource) 
 
(University of Alabama-Birmingham) 
Giving Feedback 
(Peter Ureste, MD) 
 
(UCSF Resource) 
 
(Melinda Hamilton, MD MS and Stephanie Dewar, MD) 
UPMC GMECast (audio) 
 
(Erin Giudice, MD and Kate Donohue, MD) 
MELA Moment Podcast 
Assessment 
(University of Alabama-Birmingham) 
 
(Jessica Gosnell, MD) 
 
(Nidhi Goel, MD) 
MELA Moment Podcast 
 
(UCSF Resource) 
 
(UCSF Resource) 
Safe Learning Environment 
(University of Alabama-Birmingham) 
 
(Anna Roman, PhD and Heather Reading, MBA) 
UPMC GMECast (audio) 
 
(Stacey Algren, MD and Tim Lacy, MD) 
MedEd Thread Podcast (Cleveland Clinic) 
 
 
Skill Domain 
Basic Chunk  
(~45min) 
Orienting Learners 
(Erin Giudice, MD and Phil Dittmar, MD) 
MELA Moment Podcast 
Giving Feedback 
(Maggie Benson, MD) 
Enhancing Teaching Skills for Medical Educators series 
UPMC CCEHS CME 
 
(Sarah Merriam, MD MS and Rebecca Ortiz, MD) 
Assessment 
(Arianne Teherani, PhD, Era Kryzhanovskaya MD, Frances Ue MD) 
The Curbsiders Teach Podcast 
Safe Learning Environment 
(Amanda Brown, MD MS and Sylvia Choi, MD) 
ADME Medical Education Seminar 
 
(Eloho Ufomata, MD MS) 
Enhancing Teaching Skills for Medical Educators series 
UPMC CCEHS CME 
 
(Alda Maria Gonzaga, MD MS and Thuy Bui, MD) 
 
(Consuelo Wilkins, MD, Era Kryzhanovskaya, MD, Molly Heublein, MD) 
The Curbsiders Teach Podcast 
 
Thanks to the following offices for participation in this initiative:
  • Office of Faculty Affairs
  • Office of Medical Education
  • Office of Learning Environment
  • Academy of Distinguished Medical Educators