Year: 2025
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Background: The University of Washington School of Medicine (UWSOM) and other medical schools utilize a distributed medical education (DME) model to train medical students in real-world community settings. An inherent challenge in this model is maintaining high-quality teaching across large geographic areas and clinical settings. This study compares student perceptions of rural and nonrural preceptor teaching in the UWSOM-required clerkships. Methods: Our study analyzed 41,684 medical student evaluations of preceptors from six required clerkships and over 4 clerkship school years. Using the Rural-Urban Commuting Area definitions, we categorized individual evaluations as either “rural” or “nonrural”. We used Welch’s unpaired t tests and descriptive statistics to compare rural and nonrural evaluation results. Results: The evaluation data showed high ratings of preceptor teaching across all nine teaching evaluation categories for both rural and nonrural preceptors, with mean scores of 5.5 or higher on a 6-point Likert scale. Rural preceptors slightly outperformed their nonrural counterparts in seven out of nine teaching categories, including three categories reaching statistical significance. Conclusions: Results suggest that Liaison Committee on Medical Education standards for comparable educational experiences are being met across distributed sites. We recommend a thematic analysis of student evaluation comments to contextualize the findings reported in our study.
Source: PRiMER
Authors: Elle Larson, Lars Ponsness, John McCarthy, Toby Keys
Institution: University of Washington
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4417507363
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