Introduction: Each clinical learning environment (CLE) requires learners to navigate a different set of complex interactions to engage in safe patient care while learning from real patients. Orientation forms the foundation for learning, yet CLE models in the literature are primarily written for an educator audience and practical advice for orienting learners to a new CLE is limited. To address this gap, we designed resources to support both supervisors and learners in the orientation process.
Materials/methods: We reviewed the CLE literature to select critical content for orientation and interviewed high performing residents to identify their best practices. We synthesized the literature and resident interviews into a visually appealing and easy to digest infographic designed to simultaneously remind teachers of the critical areas to cover in orientation and empower learners to ask about them. We integrated these principles into an online module for Graduate Medical Education onboarding and surveyed users about how well they could meet the module learning objectives.
Results: We organized the literature review and resident advice regarding questions learners should ask about a new CLE into the typical question categories (why, who, what, when, where, and how) and described strategies for orientation to each category. Our infographic has been incorporated into CLE orientation for multiple types of learners at our institution. After completing the orientation module, 112/124(90%) residents indicated that they could, 'Orient yourself or a learner to a clinical learning environment using orientation questions' moderately to extremely well.
Discussion: We developed resources that can be used by educators to create orientation materials and by learners to ensure they understand important features, resources, and expectations in a new CLE. Because the foundational principles of CLE apply to a variety of clinical settings and learner types, the resources may be broadly applicable.
Keywords: Clinical learning environment; faculty development; orientation; resident-as-teacher.