Jefferson Health is getting in the business of making doctors better teachers for trainees

A lot of medical education happens at the bedside, with doctors and nurses straddling dual roles in teaching a trainee and ensuring the patient receives competent care.

Adding to the challenge is that the medical providers doing the teaching were trained as clinicians, not teachers.

Thomas Jefferson University is joining a growing number of universities offering programs to develop the teaching skills of medical providers.

Starting this fall, the Jefferson College of Health Professionals will offer a master’s of science in health professions education and a shorter graduate certificate in health professions teaching and learning.

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In addition to bedside teaching skills and instructional strategies, the programs will teach education theory, curriculum development, and theory and best practices on giving feedback.

“[Medical professionals] are kind of just thrust into the role of being a teacher,” said Shruti Chandra, an emergency medicine physician who helped develop the new programs. “Almost nobody is really trained or has any sort of advanced education to know how to teach.”

Chandra is among the few with formal education training. During her fellowship, she completed a master’s of education in health professions at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Jefferson’s programs are fully virtual and mostly can be done at the pace of each student, allowing participants to work full time while they attend, she said.

About 25 universities in the United States offer a health professions education graduate program, according to a review conducted by researchers from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, a medical education program affiliated with the military. They include the University of Pennsylvania, which also offers a master’s degree and a graduate certificate program.

Chandra believes that even though Jefferson’s program won’t be the only one in town, its offerings and curriculum will set it apart.

For example, she said, the hospital training that medical residents and fellows undergo counts as an elective toward graduation in the master’s program. She also said the curriculum addresses emerging topics, such as how to run medical simulations and promote diversity and inclusion in training programs.

“I think that really puts us apart, not just as a competitor within the area but as a leader,” she said.