A workshop program to train volunteer community preceptors.

This paper describes a program initiated in 1984 by the University of Minnesota Department of Family Practice and Community Health to train volunteer community preceptors for their instructional role in the Ambulatory Care Rotation (ACR), a six-week outpatient medicine offering for third- and fourth-year medical students. The preceptor training program consists of a full-day faculty development workshop for prospective community preceptors and periodic follow-up activities designed to reinforce workshop goals. Five workshops have been held from 1984 to 1987 and have provided a group of trained faculty preceptors for the ACR. The authors reviewed the methods and results of the workshops; self-ratings by participants demonstrated a significant gain in teaching skills and knowledge. Students' ratings of both the ACR course and the teaching by preceptors have been high and compare favorably with ratings of other preceptors and clinical rotations. There has been a 97% retention rate of the workshop-trained preceptors as active teachers in the ACR course, which suggests that the preceptors are satisfied with their role.