Developing Medical Educators During Medical School: An Exploratory Study of a Precision Education-Informed Medical Education Concentration

Teaching is a critical component of medicine. Many institutions offer faculty programs to develop their teaching skills, and some offer education electives to medical students. This exploratory study describes the implementation and participants’ perspectives of a concentration that was co-created by faculty and medical students using personalized educational approaches. The integration of precision education principles into such a concentration is an unexplored area of study, offering a novel approach for tailoring educator development pathways for medical students. The concentration consists of interactive skill development workshops, educator development sessions, a teaching practicum, one medical education scholarship or research project, and observed structured teaching examinations. The first graduating cohort (n = 6) participated in interviews, which were iteratively open-coded by 3 coders. The interviews revealed 4 themes: (1) flexibility and feedback, (2) professional identity formation as a clinician educator, (3) perceived growth in teaching and educational skills, and (4) participant-identified effective components and opportunities for improvement. These findings provide preliminary insights for institutions internationally seeking to develop student-centered education programming to tackle the educator development gap present in medical training.