Enhancing the effectiveness of One-Minute Preceptor faculty development workshops.

BACKGROUND: The One Minute Preceptor (OMP) faculty development workshop is aimed at improving outpatient preceptors' abilities to teach in ambulatory settings. Practice applying the 5 microskills is central to learning the OMP, yet participants frequently avoid the role-playing portion of the standard workshop. Task complexity may result in significant cognitive burden while learning these new teaching skills.

DESCRIPTION: The development of highly scripted case scenarios and standardized learners (SLs) to role-play authentic teaching situations are aimed at reducing task complexity. We describe case development, SL training, and application of these enhancements in 5 OMP workshops.

EVALUATION: Qualitative assessments and workshop participant evaluations showed improved role-playing participation and satisfaction with the authenticity of the training sessions.

CONCLUSION: The introduction of highly scripted cases and SLs appear to effectively help participants overcome dissatisfaction with role-playing and provide increasingly challenging yet authentic clinical teaching scenarios for skills practice. We recommend further research using objective measures.