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Objective: To determine whether patient satisfaction ratings can be predicted by faculty ratings or self-ratings of resident humanism., Design: A prospective three-month collection of patient satisfaction ratings in two ambulatory care clinics and simultaneous acquisition of faculty ratings and self-ratings of resident humanism using ABIM questionnaires., Setting: Two teaching hospital ambulatory care internal medicine clinics., Participants: Forty-seven internal medicine residents and 17 faculty internists were sent questionnaires for evaluation of humanism of individual residents. One thousand one hundred ninety-four consecutive outpatients cared for by the residents were eligible for patient satisfaction questionnaires., Measurements and Main Results: Thirty-three residents and 13 faculty completed evaluations of resident humanism while 792 patients completed satisfaction questionnaires, which were used for analysis. The faculty ratings of resident humanism correlated strongly with patient satisfaction ratings, while the resident self-ratings did not., Conclusions: Faculty ratings of resident humanism were highly predictive of patient satisfaction with the care rendered by internal medicine residents in two ambulatory care clinics. This suggests that ambulatory care settings are useful for evaluation of noncognitive behavioral features of resident performance.

The authors interviewed faculty members to determine their perceptions of what constitutes effective teaching in the ambulatory setting. They conducted semistructured interviews with experienced clinician-tutors who supervise residents in two internal medicine clinics. Tutors identified similarities as well as important differences between inpatient teaching and outpatient teaching. Questioning, role modeling, and emphasizing general principles and concept comprehension can be used effectively in both settings. On the other hand, the two settings differ strikingly in teaching of problem solving, bedside teaching, and provision of feedback. Many characteristics of the setting influence outpatient teaching, but the tutors offered differing viewpoints about whether these characteristics are beneficial or detrimental.

Objective: To evaluate the casemix seen during an internal medicine clerkship and to assess the educational value of the problems seen., Design: A modified Delphi-group opinion technique was used to develop a clerk log that included priority problems for internal medicine. Over a 12-month period, clerks recorded their exposure to the problems seen during their eight-week rotations. General internists rated the importance of each of the problems on a three-point scale., Setting: The inpatient internal medicine services in six university teaching hospitals., Subjects: All clinical clerks in a single undergraduate year recorded their experiences. All university-based general internists participated in rating problem importance., Measurements and Main Results: The final approved log contained 72 problems, 64 of which received importance ratings greater than or equal to 2 on the three-point scale. The frequency of clerk exposure per problem was high and the correlation between frequency of exposure and importance was good. Ten important problems had relatively low exposure and four problems of lower importance had high exposure., Conclusions: The clinical clerks were exposed to a broad spectrum of diseases, but some key problems were not well represented on the wards. Alternative strategies, including increased ambulatory care exposure, will be required to complete the exposure and to assure that the quality of patient exposure matches the quantity.