In the current economic climate, clinical programs have come under increased pressure to do more with less. The integration of adjuncts in clinical programs presents a lower cost alternative to full time clinical faculty, and increases the range and potential depth of experiential offerings. But questions remain. How can we train adjuncts efficiently? Is there a cost in terms of the quality of the experience students receive? What can we learn from adjuncts? And ultimately, are we arranging our own demise, or relegating ourselves to purely administrative tasks?
The presenters will describe their experience integrating adjuncts in various experiential offerings, and discuss the training programs they have developed and deployed, including Clinical Teaching 101 and the Clinical Adjunct Roundtable. By using clinical pedagogy to teach the teachers about teaching, these training programs allow adjunct professors to learn clinical teaching through experience, while simultaneously providing clinicians with a fresh perspective from practice.
The presentation will include an interactive simulation of a Clinical Adjunct Roundtable session, where participants in the session play the role of adjunct professors. The session will conclude with a guided reflection that focuses on the broader implications of a “new normal” where full-time clinical faculty train teachers, not students.
Participants in this session will come away with new ideas to expand their current models for training adjuncts, including how to use clinical rounds pedagogy and reflection within their training. Participants will also gain a deeper understanding of the economic rationale and potential trade-offs for the use of adjunct clinical faculty.