Evaluation of clinical training in the community.

An evaluation approach is presented that is designed to deal with the complex educational problems associated with community-based teaching. Such problems include using instructors with limited training in teaching, ensuring comparability of student experiences, monitoring students' performance in dispersed settings, and maintaining adequate communications among involved parties. The approach is based on a careful delineation of information needs and data sources followed by the design and strategic combination of evaluation instruments in order to promote efficiency in data collection. An application of the approach is described for an undergraduate clerkship in family medicine taught at multiple sites at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Nine instruments are described for eliciting information from four sources to satisfy the needs of five groups associated with the course. Sample results are presented suggesting that the approach is effective and may prove useful to others involved with teaching in dispersed settings.