Using a novel small-group approach to enhance feedback skills for community-based teachers.

Background: As medical education expands into distant settings, challenges in providing faculty development to busy clinical teachers increase-especially for those who have difficulty accessing sessions offered at academic centers.

Description: Sixty-five clinical teachers participated in six small-group workshops, using a printed module on the topic of delivering feedback. The modules included teaching-learning "cases," tools, and a summary of medical literature.

Commitment to change: exploring its role in changing physician behavior through continuing education.

Statements of commitment to change are advocated both to promote physician change and to assess interventions designed to promote change. Although commitment to change is only one part of a complex process of change, recent progress has established a solid theoretical and research base to support this approach. Studies have demonstrated that it can be used effectively with many different types of educational activities and that statements of "plans to change " practice can predict actual changes.