A pilot study of team learning on in-patient rounds

Background: Medical trainees often do not receive structured teaching during in-patient rounds.

Objective: To assess whether the addition of a collaborative team learning technique would improve the learning experience on a general medicine in-patient team.

Methods: Eight learners participated in this pilot study. Learning teams consisted of internal medicine residents and third-year medical students on a general medicine in-patient rotation. The experimental curriculum covered four common topics: cardiac stress testing; syncope; pneumonia; and valvular heart disease. Sessions had the following format: (1) each learner answered five self-assessment questions using an immediate feedback technique; (2) learners were divided into groups of two or three to discuss their answers; (3) the teaching doctor led a discussion to clarify and summarise, and also distributed a handout delineating key learning points. Control sessions consisted of the usual teaching rounds. Learners were e-mailed a daily online survey asking them to rate the rounds and handouts on a Likert scale. Medical trainees often do not receive structured teaching during in-patient rounds

Results: All of the learners rated the collaborative team learning intervention as either 'excellent' or 'very good'. Learners also indicated that they found the take-away handout valuable, and positive responses were also noted in the survey comments.

Discussion: A novel collaborative team learning technique resulted in high ratings of teaching rounds by medical residents and medical students. Learners found the sessions engaging, high yield, and educationally valuable. This interactive discussion-based teaching method could be used to enhance the learning experience during teaching rounds on medical, surgical and subspecialty services.