For me, the best learning climates are those that involve material that I need to know conveyed in a fashion that I can understand and that challenges me. In my preclinical education, I eventually stopped going to class because the lectures were from experts that had spent 10-20 years in their field, and couldn’t explain the topics in simple, more basic language.

Additionally, I think fostering an environment where it’s good to ask questions is also key. I was recently told by my peers in rotations to “never ask an attending a question” because the attending would just turn around and suggest the student research the topic on his/her own, or to give a presentation on it a few days later. Obviously these attending mean well, but increasing a student’s already full workload is not always the way to educate him or her.

Lastly, I’ve experience good pimping, and bad pimping. Good pimping’s goal is for the student to learn, bad pimping’s goal is for the attending/resident/intern/4th year to show off how much smarter he or she is than the medical student. Good pimping is key to a good learning climate, but bad pimping eradicates any hope at learning well.

I agree with the “don’t ask the attending” as they will ask you to research it or do a presentation on it… “go look it up”. I think the information gained on the field (at bedside) always sticks better and helps the resident who is watching the attending treat people and trying to put everything together at bedside. If the questions are answered right there and then, the info is just more likely to stick… On the wards, there is usually not enough time to “go look it up”…

Hard to answer this question without the acrid taste of sour grapes. Similar to Alex, I think pimping (and I should note I’ve never really had much “bad pimping”) is an effective way of teaching, but my guess is that it’s a terrible way of evaluating (fun experiment would be to get attendings who regularly teach students to guess their board/MCAT scores and rank their fund of knowledge along some ordinal scheme, and see how well those estimates match up to the actual objective measures).

I suspect this is a rather banal point, but I value things about myself that aren’t typically measured or talked about in medical school (eg I read fiction not by Michael Crichton). In general months, tend to be looser, friendlier, more productive, and result in better grades for me when the attending makes some gesture at reaching out to the non-medical side of me (unclear if the better grades represent better performance by a more comfortable me, softer grading from friendly or sympathetic attending, or what). Anyways, my general experience has been that this is pretty infrequent.

I am testing my comment first because right now it’s coming out in unreadable tiny print…..

Oh, one other thing. Knee-jerkish, I know. But, always, always, always, be skeptical of the current mod-ish teaching practices. E.g. quality-based, evidence-based, etc. Certainly use them as a starting point; however, they are simply models that are meant as a lowest common denominator and should be expressed as being minimally dressed.

Because I get a chance to orient and work with med students in the ICU as a RN I can tell you right off how to teach. First start out by saying hello. Yes, I know it sounds silly but you should be shocked at how often no one bothers to say hello and introduce themselves to med students.
Be proactive and start rounds by explaining the patients problems and issues and then stop and ask your med students if they are okay and do they understand. If someone asks a question get EXCITED, A question is a teaching moment. You are the teacher by the way. Ask the med student where you lost them, See, this gives the student the opportunity to demonstrate they aren’t morons, still just a student. Link up where they got lost to where they need to be.
I work in a huge academic center in Toronto, our Attendings don’t teach, they pontificate and it makes me crazy. I can present my patient in five minutes or less. I can state the issues and my opinions on how to solve these issues. Most Attendings completely lose the plot and start nattering on about obscure, useless studies no one cares about.
Attendings need to shut up and listen. Rounds are not the Attendings chance to show off, it’s the med students time to learn and practice that learning.
And keep your sarcastic or belittling comments to yourself. I can become irate if an attending starts in on a resident or a med student…I won’t allow it at my bedside.
I love having a med student. It’s great to be around someone who really wants to learn. Why the Attendings who get paid to teach are so hateful? I don’t know..I teach for free and love it.
I think the best thing for a teacher is to be compassionate and professional.