A review of the medical education literature for graduate medical education teachers.

Background: A rapidly evolving body of literature in medical education can impact the practice of clinical educators in graduate medical education.

Objective: To aggregate studies published in the medical education literature in 2011 to provide teachers in general internal medicine with an overview of the current, relevant medical education literature.

Review: We systematically searched major medical education journals and the general clinical literature for medical education studies with sound design and relevance to the educational practice of graduate medical education teachers. We chose 12 studies, grouped into themes, using a consensus method, and critiqued these studies.

Results: Four themes emerged. They encompass (1) learner assessment, (2) duty hour limits and teaching in the inpatient setting, (3) innovations in teaching, and (4) learner distress. With each article we also present recommendations for how readers may use them as resources to update their clinical teaching. While we sought to identify the studies with the highest quality and greatest relevance to educators, limitation of the studies selected include their single-site and small sample nature, and the frequent lack of objective measures of outcomes. These limitations are shared with the larger body of medical education literature.

Conclusions: The themes and the recommendations for how to incorporate this information into clinical teaching have the potential to inform the educational practice of general internist educators as well as that of teachers in other specialties.