Using standardised students in faculty development workshops to improve clinical teaching skills Mark H Gelula & Rachel Yudkowsky Purpose We describe the use of standardised students (SSs) in interdisciplinary faculty development pro- grammes to improve clinical teaching skills. Standard- ised students are actual health professions students who are trained to portray a prototypical teaching challenge consistently across many encounters with different faculty participants. Methods The faculty development programmes des- cribed focused on the skills of providing feedback and brief clinical teaching. At the beginning of each session, each participant was videotaped in encounters with 2 different SSs. Using microteaching (an instructional method in which learners view short segments of their own videotaped performance and discuss the tapes with a facilitator, consultant or other workshop partici- pants), each group of participants and instructors reviewed the tapes and reflected on the encounters, providing immediate feedback to participants and modelling different approaches to the same teaching problem. The same process was repeated with more complicated scenarios after 2 weeks and again after 6 months offering reinforcement, further practice and more sophisticated development of the strategies learned. Participants completed post-session evalua- tions and a follow-up telephone survey. Results A total of 36 faculty members from the colleges of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and nursing partici- pated in workshops in 2000–01. The workshops were rated as highly relevant to participants’ teaching, and most participants reported that they had learned a great deal. Participants most appreciated reviewing the videotaped interactions, the feedback they received, the interactions with their colleagues, the interdisci- plinary nature of the groups and the practical focus of the workshops. Conclusions Standardised students provide a high fidel- ity, low risk, simulated environment in which faculty can reflect on and experiment with new teaching behaviours. Such encounters can enhance the effect- iveness and impact of faculty development programmes to improve clinical teaching skills. Keywords education, medical, undergraduate ⁄ *meth- ods; educational measurement ⁄ *standards; *clinical competence; teaching; curriculum; questionnaires. Medical Education 2003;37:621–629 Introduction Health professions faculty in busy clinical settings need efficient teaching skills to maximise the effectiveness of the brief time they have available to spend with trainees. Similarly, academic medical centres need efficient faculty development programmes to maximise the effectiveness of the brief time available to faculty for professional development. Faculty development work- shops that combine the proven effectiveness of micro- teaching techniques with the impact of standardised students (SSs) may provide an answer to both these needs. Standardised students are actual health professions students who are trained to portray a specific student personality and to present a prototypical clinical teach- ing challenge in a consistent and reliable way in encounters with several different faculty members. They are in many ways analogous to standardised patients, who are lay persons trained to portray a specific patient’s clinical history and physical findings reliably and consistently across many encounters with different students. Simulated teaching encounters with SSs use teaching cases crafted specifically for each workshop and highly trained students who are not Department of Medical Education, College of Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA Correspondence: Mark H Gelula, PhD, Department of Medical Education (M ⁄ C 591), University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine, 808 South Wood Street, Chicago, Illinois 60612-7309, USA. Tel.: 00 1 312 996 2696; Fax: 00 1 312 413 2048; E-mail: mgelula@uic.edu The teaching environment Ó Blackwell Publishing Ltd MEDICAL EDUCATION 2003;37:621–629 621