Tapping in: Maximizing the Potential of a Near-Peer Student Chief

Medical students taught by peer-teachers score equivocally or better on written and clinical skills assessments compared head-to-head against faculty-taught students. These results may stem from stronger relationships between near-peers, as evidenced by student ratings and more positive evaluations. Studies have also suggested that a combination of faculty and near-peer teaching can surpass faculty led education alone. Additionally, peer-teachers exhibit increased learning on subjects they teach and perform better on clinical evaluations. In this manner, the peer-teachers assist students in learning material, and in turn tutor themselves. While fourth-year students rotate through teaching medical services along with third-year students, they carry their own learning and patient care duties, and clinical responsibilities may prevent them from taking on a teaching and coaching role.

Given the multitude of potential benefits, including the opportunity for fourth-year medical students interested in medical education to learn and practice their budding skills, we created an internal medicine student chief elective. The responsibilities of the students in this position include teaching/coaching third-year students on their rotations, serving as a liaison between students and faculty, creating educational content for clerkship students and using student feedback to improve both the clerkship and student chief rotations while being provided asynchronous didactics in medical education topics.