PROFESSIONAL ISSUES

Faculty of one: How to teach a future doctor while still tending your patients

Office-based physicians now play an increasingly important role in medical education.

By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. March 14, 2005.

With more medical schools wanting their students to learn from physicians in a practice setting, more doctors than ever have the opportunity to pass on what they know to the next generation.

But it's one thing to answer the occasional question from a young doctor in training when you happen to be at a hospital or at a dinner. It's another thing when you realize you have an eager, wide-eyed student trailing your every move, and that you're expected to show that student everything you know while still being responsible for a full patient load and keeping your practice financially afloat. Oh, and to do that for little or no extra pay.

"It's getting harder to get people because of the pressure people are under," said David Kern, MD, MPH, co-director of general internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. "Working for HMOs or even for yourself, if you are in a nonprocedural specialty, there's increased productivity pressure."

So should you tell the local medical school "no thanks" when it comes calling?

Not necessarily. There are resources out there to help doctors learn how to balance teaching and practicing medicine. As far as remuneration, even if you're not getting paid in dollars, they say, becoming a preceptor has its own rewards.

Andrew Albritton, MD, associate dean for curriculum at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, said despite the lack of monetary reward, teaching students is worth it.

"I work with two second-year students, and they heard their first S3 gallop," said Dr. Albritton, who also recruits and trains physicians for the school's branch campus in rural southwest Georgia, which relies heavily on clinical rotations in community-based offices. "They were so enthusiastic. It reminds me why I went into medical school in the first place."

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