Featured Resource: The Clinical Educator Milestone Project
1-2 Minute Read
Author: Julpohng “JP” Vilai, MD, FAAP
Even for the best educators, there may be a lack of familiarity with available resources for improving clinical teaching skills; enter The Clinical Educator Milestones Project. A collaboration between the various accreditation councils and both allopathic and osteopathic medical school associations, The Clinical Educator Milestones Project outlines five competencies (some with sub-competencies) for clinical educators to formatively develop and improve the teaching and learning skills.(1)
Competencies and Milestones
In the same way a child progresses from sitting to crawling to standing, clinicians can achieve milestones on a continuum from Level 1 (novice) to Level 5 (expert) across several competencies (and sub-competencies).
These are not accreditation requirements, so they are practical! Clinicians can use the milestones for self-assessment or with colleagues for feedback and assessment. Mastery of a given milestone level implies competency at that level and those at lower levels.
Teaching is an art; to be any good at it, it needs to be learned, modeled, practiced, and crafted just as much as placing an arterial line or performing a lumbar puncture. But who has the time for that in a busy clinic or while in the 23rd hour of being on call?
As daunting as teaching may be for some when all you want is to do your job and go home, remember that we were all once medical students and residents. Many of us had a mentor or someone who inspired us. What those individuals had in common was that they prioritized teaching, practiced it, lived it, and tried to do it better each time. As a result, we learned things that we still remember and use to this day.
“See one, do one, teach one” may work sometimes, but, regardless of which educational sandbox we play in today, milestones provide a framework to help all of us grow and develop into the best educators we can be.
References
1. ACGME. Program Directors' Guide to the Common Program Requirements. https://www.acgme.org/Portals/0/PFAssets/ProgramResources/PDGuideResidency.pdf.
2. ACGME. The Clinician Educator Milestone Project. https://www.acgme.org/globalassets/pdfs/milestones/standalone/2022/clinicianeducatormilestones.pdf.
3. Wolff M, Deiorio NM, Miller Juve A, Richardson J, Gazelle G, Moore M, Santen SA, Hammoud MM. Beyond advising and mentoring: Competencies for coaching in medical education. Med Teach. 2021 Oct;43(10):1210-1213. doi: 10.1080/0142159X.2021.1947479. Epub 2021 Jul 27. PMID: 34314291