Background: A significant portion of the AuD curriculum occurs in clinical settings outside the
classroom. Expert clinicians, employed within and outside of the university, are called
upon to provide this clinical education. Most have had little or no formal training
in clinical teaching yet face pedagogical and logistical challenges when simultaneously
providing clinical service and teaching. Training to provide optimal methods and approaches
to clinical instruction should be based on research evidence; however, there is a
paucity of research in this area within the audiology discipline.
Purpose: This article provides a review of literature supplying evidence for important concepts,
elements, and approaches to the clinical instruction process. Additionally, we provide
readers with some practical tools with which to facilitate application of optimal
clinical teaching principles.
Research Design: We conducted a systematic review of literature on clinical education in audiology
and across a wide array of health professions. Through the use of content analysis
we identified four elements of the clinical teaching process most critical in examining
optimal practices.
Results: The elements identified as critical to positive clinical learning outcomes include
the establishment of mutual expectations and goals; structured content and delivery
of feedback; establishment of a positive instructor/student relationship; and questioning
strategies that lead to the development of critical thinking skills.
Conclusions: Many disciplines outside of audiology demonstrate robust research activity related
to understanding and optimizing the clinical education process. The application of
a number of evidence-based clinical teaching principles should allow us to improve
student outcomes in audiology. Researchers in our field might consider if and how
we should develop our own research literature in clinical education.
Key Words
Critical thinking - education - expectations - feedback - relationship
