Okay. Now that you've had a moment to think about why orientation is important in your setting, let's take a look at what the literature might have to say about orientation. There was a literature review that was done in 2000 that looked at how you can make your teaching very efficient and effective. Guess what were some of the major emphasis points of that article. Well, as you can imagine, it was orientation. One of the top findings to be an efficient teacher and effective, is to give your learners a really good orientation. The next thing that this literature review talked about was being able to prioritize your learners needs. So, you'll have learners from all different spectrums, even if you teach medical students, if you teach residents, everyone has their own unique history. There are certain things that they need to get out of the experience with you. It's great to talk to them a little bit about what their needs are with you. Another technique that you can use is something called priming your learner. This is actually, after you've oriented them to your particular learning setting, you actually want to orient them to the patients they're going to be seeing. Again, it will depend a little bit about your particular setting, but to prime your learner, you might want to, for example, in the outpatient clinic, take them to look at the patient list. Go over a patient that they're going to see with them. Figure out for them setting expectations. How long do you expect them to be in the room with a patient? What's the outcome of that? Do you just want them to present a portion of the history? The entire history? The management plan? Prime your learner for what they need to do in the room, and what they need to do when they come out of the room. So, let's talk a little bit about orientation. There's a very helpful mnemonic that you can use to think about what needs to happen in orientation. Let's take each one of these and talk about them in a little bit more detail. First the overview. So on the very first day, when a student arrives to be with you, you know that can be very confusing and disorienting. So you really want to really give them a literal layout of the land. Things that are helpful to them. Who all is in the office? Who can help them? Where are the bathrooms? How does the medical records work where you're at? There's many things that might be pertinent to your setting to help them feel comfortable for that day. Here again, is where you can prime the learner on what are their needs and what are your needs, and you can set down your expectations for them. Setting down expectations of what you need from the learner is one of the primary things you can do to have a very efficient clinic. Next would be reviewing learner objectives. You want to have these be specific to the learner. So, for example, if you have a medical student, there may be a series of diagnoses that they need to see on their clerkship. If you have a resident with you, there may be certain competencies that they need to achieve. It's best if you can renew, if you can review that with the learner so that you can agree on what they need to get out of their experience with you. How will they achieve this? Again, it depends on how long the learner will be with you. If it's just for an afternoon, you may highlight one particular patient for them to see with you. If the student will be with you for a more longitudinal experience, you may have more time to get those learning objectives in. Here are some really important points. All learners want to know how they're going to be evaluated, and how they're going to get feedback. It's really important to let our learner know who's contributing to the evaluation. Is it just you? Is it going to be nurses in the clinic setting? Is it going to be other attendings or resident physicians? And then it's really important to schedule a time for feedback. Where you really tell the learner, all right, you're going to be with me for a week. How about on Wednesday, we have some time at 3 o'clock where we're going to go over your feedback, and then you need to stick to this, of course. It's also good to negotiate responsibilities. These can be about teaching. So, for example, many of your learners may have a lot of experience in a certain area. They may have had careers before they came to medical school or to residency, where there might be things that they can actually teach you or teach the team. So this is a time to negotiate what's going to be happening in your setting. What are you teaching them? What do you expect for them to teach you and the team? Finally, it's also good to tell something about yourselves. This can help personalize the experience. It, again, let's you know what the learner needs help with, and what you can be the expert on with them. So, orient. Overview, review learner responsibilities, give them insight into how they'll be evaluated, ensure they get feedback, negotiate teaching responsibilities, talk a little bit about each other. Let's take a moment now for you to think about your particular experience. Where do you teach? How might you fill in each of these letters for that mnemonic, and what would you tell your learner?
