APGO

Background: Interprofessional education (IPE) is becoming increasingly important.  Recent publications highlight the growing interest in IPE and emphasize the need for additional research in this area. To our knowledge no previous studies have examined medical student educational experiences with non-physician providers.  We sought to examine medical students’ assessments of CNMs’ and physicians’ quality of teaching.

Methods: During the OBGYN six-week clerkship, medical students rotate for two weeks on sub-specialty services (eg MFM, Benign Gynecology). The Labor and Delivery Triage block is exclusively led and taught by the CNMs, while physicians teach other blocks. Medical students complete standardized evaluations at the completion of each clerkship. For the academic year 2015-2016, student responses to the “overall quality of teaching” of individual faculty and “overall quality of teaching on the subspecialty service” (1=poor, 5=excellent) were examined using paired T test and descriptive statistics, respectively. 

Results: Medical students evaluated 66 physicians and 13 CNMs. There was no significant difference in mean scores for physicians and midwives (4.54 versus 4.43, P= 0.470.) When examining subspecialty blocks individually, the triage block had a statistically significant higher mean score for overall quality of teaching (4.44 versus 3.97, P=0.002).  

Discussions: This pilot data demonstrates that medical students highly rate the quality of education received from CNMs. As medical schools alter their curricula to accommodate changing learning environments and educational objectives, CNM involvement should be included in medical student education. 

Keywords: Ambulatory Education, Curriculum Development/Evaluation, Evaluation of Clinical Performance, Feedback Evaluation, Interprofessional, Teaching Skills