Students' perception of the characteristics of effective bedside teachers

Background and methods: To determine a student perspective of the characteristics of ideal bedside teachers, a 25-item questionnaire was administered to 84 final-year medical students. The items were constructed to check for two domains of 'Communication' and of 'Demographics'. The former included behaviours such as providing constructive feedback, respecting patient confidentiality and encouraging critical thinking, while the latter included characteristics such as gender, academic rank and language skills. Results: The students identified the characteristics in the 'Communication' domain as being far more important determinants of ideal bedside teaching than the 'Demographics' domain. Factor analysis showed that of the questions designed to determine communication all but one loaded unequivocally into a single factor, while the demographics were best described by two additional factors. Both these factors represented teacher properties that were difficult or impossible for the teacher to modify, while those in the communication domain were all amenable to change. Conclusions: These results are consistent with data from the literature on the broader aspects of clinical teaching, and imply that the ideal bedside teaching experience from the perspective of the students is heavily influenced by teacher behaviours than that can be modified.