First Year Medical Student’s Viewpoint Regarding Qualities of an Excellent Teacher

Abstract

In the academia, the qualities of excellent teacher are related to personal
traits, effective teaching technique, and interpersonal communication of
teacher. A qualitative research was conducted to identify the
characteristics of a good clinical teacher as perceived by first year
medical students at Allama Iqbal Medical College, Lahore, Pakistan
from May, 2015 to July, 2015. Twenty five medical students were asked
to express their opinion freely about qualities of teacher whom they think
qualifies him/her as an excellent teacher and what specifically makes
his/her lectures so effective according to their perceptions.
Phenomenological approach was used to investigate medical students’
experiences and their interpretations of the excellent teacher. Several key
analytic strategies were used such as ‘Coding’, for both categorizing
qualitative data and describing the connotation and details of these
categories. Two major themes that an excellent teacher should possess
were personal qualities and presentation skills from which 15 sub-themes
were identified .The study concluded that first year medical students
think that an excellent teacher should not only possess personal
characteristics and qualities like good moral character, empathy and sympathy but he should also exhibit excellent skills in lecture delivery,
ability to organize lectures and its contents.