Residents as Fearless Teachers (RAFT)

Residents have a critical role in shaping medical student education. Upstate's College of Medicine Faculty and Administration are committed to providing excellent support to our resident colleagues for their roles as teachers of medical students and educational team leaders.

We are committed to developing our medical students as Fearless Learners™, learners with humility and confidence, curiosity and motivation, stick-to-it-iveness and a commitment to their own continued education. We expect our residents not only to be Fearless Learners, but also Residents as Fearless Teachers (RAFT), who will support each other, students , faculty and patients as partners in the learning process. For more information about Upstate Medical University's Residency Programs, contact the Upstate Office of Graduate of Medical Education.

Participation in Teaching activities will meet the following ACGME Competencies:

• Medical Knowledge
• Practice Based Learning and Improvement
• Interpersonal and Communication Skills
• Professionalism

Residents are expected to be familiar with:

• The Educational Program Graduation Competencies and Objectives for medical student education in the College of Medicine. Online attestation available through GME Bb.
• The learning objectives in the clerkship in which they teach and supervise students, including the appropriate educational activities supporting those objectives and the methods of assessing student performance.
• Student policies regarding mistreatment and professionalism and methods for reporting institutional or departmental student mistreatment. This is in addition to the confidential feedback form available through the GME office.
• Methods of feedback and evaluation, including the common clerkship evaluation form.

Our goal is to empower excellence in teaching for all teaching residents and to partner with them in supporting their critical role in creating and maintaining a positive learning environment. This includes providing support for needed teaching skills:

• Establishing a positive learning environment
• Clarity in communicating expectations
• Delivery of educational content
• Curriculum design (Edtalks@Upstate)
• Evaluation of learners
• Provision of constructive feedback
• Role modeling of professionalism to foster a culture of mutual respect, regard and support for each member of the healthcare and education teams and their patients

• Upstate's collection of resources for medical education
• Faculty Development Bb: All faculty are enrolled and after signing in to Bb, click on left link folder: Education 601.
• Educational Communications: Ed Comm's services include the support of student computing, video conferencing, PC training, photography, audio-visual services, medical illustration, graphic design, multimedia production, video technologies, and audio-visual systems.

External Resources

• Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine: This is a toolbox of powerpoints, transcripts, templates, practice scenarios and handouts. Topics range and include oral presentations, feedback, clinical reasoning, professionalism and RIME.
• American Academy of Pediatrics Residents as Teachers Workshop Packet (PDF). Useful for faculty who are interested in creating a workshop, offers a good pre-test.
• Stanford School of Medicine brief forms that may be useful for evaluation of students. Site also has very brief "pearls" for evaluation methods.
• University of Southern California Resident's Teaching Skills Website: Contains excellent videos showing student/teacher diads. Many resources and links to other schools.
• University of Arizona Residents as Teachers: Multiple links to resources
• Jefferson University: Residents as teachers, multiple video scenarios
• MedEdPORTAL: An online resource with peer reviewed teaching materials such as tutorials, cases, lab manuals, assessment instruments, faculty development materials, etc.