Bedside Teaching: general and discipline-specific teacher characteristics, criteria for patient selection and difficulties

OBJECTIVE: With regard to bedside teaching (BST), which has an important function in medical education for practicing history taking and clinical examination, only few studies can be found which define recommendations for its realization. However, difficulties with this teaching method are often reported in evaluations. Hence, the goal of this study is to collect important general requirements for bedside teaching and to identify important aspects of patient selection.

METHODS: A newly designed questionnaire with closed and open questions concerning the organisation, the execution and the design of BST as well as patient selection was sent to a total of 134 teachers from the departments of surgery, internal medicine and psychiatry. The collected data were analysed using quantitative and qualitative methods.

RESULTS: Teachers from internal medicine were significantly older than teachers from both other disciplines. In surgery, a significantly higher number of hours was taught by younger residents. Patient consent and the match of their diseases to the learning objectives were stated to be the most important factors for patient selection across disciplines. Psychiatrists put significantly more emphasis on patients' German language skills according to their own declaration. By trend, an acute deterioration of the state of health was mentioned more often in surgery to lead to an exclusion from BST.

CONCLUSION: With regard to planning of content, organisation and patient selection for BST, aspects mentioned by teachers as well as discipline specific characteristics should be considered for and addressed during teacher trainings.