Writing for Preceptor

Author: Judy Hanrahan, JD, MA, Managing Editor

Preceptor pieces are short 500-1400 word pieces written for medical school clinical faculty. The general aim of Preceptor is to provide faculty development for clinical preceptors to improve their clinical teaching, understand current trends in medical education, and integrate arts, humanities, and health systems science into their teaching. We seek contributions from experienced medical educators, clinicians, or other experts in one of the following areas: Evidence based teaching, science of learning, providing effective feedback, bioethics, health systems science, arts and humanities, and the law.

Categories

Each piece should fit into one of the following categories:

Science of Learning

Medical Education 101

National Trends

Justice in the Clinic

Arts & Humanities

Clinical Educator Resources

Sections

Each Preceptor piece should include the following sections:

Purpose: One sentence purpose statement. The purpose should focus on why clinical educators need the information in the piece.

Learning Objective(s): Minimum of one learning objective maximum of three learning objectives. Each learning objectives should start with a learning verb. Learn about Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives from Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teaching and use the list of Bloom’s Taxonomy learning verbs from the University of Florida’s Center for Instructional Technology and Training. .

Body: The tone of the piece should be casual and engaging but also well referenced. Please include first person experiences and anecdotes, when possible.

Authors are encouraged to include videos, pictures, charts, links to podcasts, etc to make their piece as engaging as possible. Please include digital assets you want to use (or links to them), we will work on either recreating graphics, or finding similar pictures. We encourage you to find pictures on stock.adobe.com and link to them, we will license them for use in the newsletter.

Include exercises or interactive components when appropriate.

Subheadings: Provide subheadings to break up the piece into manageable chunks and to guide the reader.

Intext Citations: (1) use brackets for intext citations.

References: (1) AMA style references. (Hint: PubMed will format citations in AMA style for you to copy and paste.)

Summary

Word Count: 500-1400 words.

Audience: Medical School clinical faculty, especially community preceptors.

Purpose: Each Preceptor should be geared toward what clinical educators need to know or understand, why it is important, and when possible how to best use the information provided.

Tone: Casual and engaging, but well-referenced.

Graphics and other Media: Make your piece interactive and break up the text with graphics or other media.

Reference Style: AMA, please include links to the resources. (Hint: PubMed will format citations in AMA style for you to copy and paste.)

Example

Download this Word template.

Contributing

Please reach out to Judy Hanrahan, our managing editor, with your idea for a Preceptor piece before you start writing. You will work directly with Ms. Hanrahan on developing your idea. We look forward to working with you.

Judy Hanrahan, JD, MA - jhanrahan@roseman.edu■