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In the eyes of residents good supervisors need to be more than engaged physicians: the relevance of teacher work engagement in residency training

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Abstract

During their development into competent medical specialists, residents benefit from their attending physicians’ excellence in teaching and role modelling. Work engagement increases overall job performance, but it is unknown whether this also applies to attending physicians’ teaching performance and role modelling. Attending physicians in clinical teaching practice take on roles as doctors and teachers. Therefore, this study (a) examined levels of attending physicians’ work engagement in both roles, and (b) quantified the relationships of both work engagement roles to their teaching performance and role model status. In this multicenter survey, residents evaluated attending physicians’ teaching performance and role model status using the validated System for Evaluation of Teaching Qualities. Attending physicians self-reported their work engagement on a 7-point scale, separately for their roles as doctors and teachers, using the validated 9-item Utrecht Work Engagement Scale. In total, 549 (68 %) residents filled out 4,305 attending physician evaluations and 627 (78 %) attending physicians participated. Attending physicians reported higher work engagement in their doctor than in their teacher roles (mean difference: 0.95; 95 % CI 0.86–1.04; p < 0.001). Teacher work engagement was positively related to teaching performance (regression coefficient, B: 0.11; 95 % CI 0.08–0.14; p < 0.001), which in turn was positively associated to role model status (B: 1.08; 95 % CI 0.10–1.18; p < 0.001). In the eyes of residents, good supervisors need to be more than engaged physicians, as attending physicians with high teacher work engagement were evaluated as better teachers.

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Acknowledgments

We thank all residents and attending physicians who participated in this study. We thank Medox for designing and maintaining the web application used for the System of Evaluating Teaching Qualities (SETQ). We thank our colleagues of the Professional Performance research group and the members of the Journal Club for their stimulating feedback on this study. This study is part of the research project Quality of Clinical Teachers and Residency Training Programs, which is co-financed by the Dutch Ministry of Health, the Academic Medical Center of Amsterdam, and the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences of the University of Maastricht. Funders had no role in design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; and preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Professional Performance Research Group, Center for Evidence Based Education, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Meibergdreef 9, PO Box 22700, 1100 DE, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Renée A. Scheepers, Onyebuchi A. Arah, Maas Jan Heineman & Kiki M. J. M. H. Lombarts

  2. Department of Epidemiology, The Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Onyebuchi A. Arah

  3. UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Onyebuchi A. Arah

  4. Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Maas Jan Heineman

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  1. Renée A. Scheepers
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  2. Onyebuchi A. Arah
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  3. Maas Jan Heineman
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  4. Kiki M. J. M. H. Lombarts
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Correspondence to Renée A. Scheepers.

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Scheepers, R.A., Arah, O.A., Heineman, M.J. et al. In the eyes of residents good supervisors need to be more than engaged physicians: the relevance of teacher work engagement in residency training. Adv in Health Sci Educ 20, 441–455 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-014-9538-0

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