Evaluating instruction in medical education.

The component parts and development of a comprehensive system to evaluate and improve teaching in a school of medicine are described by the author in this paper. This system integrates quantitative measures of teaching (student/resident ratings of classroom and clinical teaching), descriptive documentation (faculty teaching load, innovations, and research on teaching), and qualitative judgments (peer review) on the full spectrum of instruction in medicine. Medical school policies have standardized evaluation criteria, instrumentation, and procedures while granting departments flexibility in conducting peer review. The results of two studies indicate that the evaluation system described here has had a positive impact both on the improvement of teaching and on academic promotions.