Individual teaching qualities of those supervising and teaching during clerkships are generally not systematically evaluated, however this is essential for optimizing the quality of medical education. The past years the System for Evaluating of Teaching Qualities (SETQ) was developed and validated to provide individual faculty with teaching performance feedback from their residents. The SETQ was recently revised (SETQ-Smart) to better fit modern ideas about graduate medical education. In this study validity evidence is sought for using an adjusted SETQ-Smart in an undergraduate setting.

The SETQ -co-Smart is the adapted version for medical students to evaluate their clinical teachers. The questionnaire consists of 30 items and 7 domains of teaching performance (i.e. learning climate, professional attitude and behavior towards student, learning focus, evaluation, feedback, professionalism and role modeling)  combined with narrative feedback. A validation study is planned during a 6 months period including the clerkships internal medicine, surgery and pediatrics at one university hospital and 2 non-university hospitals. In order to gain broad acceptance for this project we spoke to key clinical teachers and informed faculty and residents by presentations and written information.

The face validity of the instrument was assessed by the project group including experts in the field of professional performance and medical education, a clinician and medical students.

We wonder whether the SETQ-co-Smart will be as reliable and valid as the SETQ for faculty and residents.

Unfortunately we had some delay with the data collection; it now will start soon.