Ten tips to effectively engage community-based preceptors in distributed medical education settings

Abstract

The effective engagement of community-based preceptors in distributed medical education (DME) settings is an active challenge in medical education. DME is a model of medical education that involves training medical students in multiple, geographically dispersed locations. DME environments include regional medical campuses (RMCs) and rural areas. Preceptors at regional medical campuses (RMCs) and in rural settings have diverse needs that may differ substantially from faculty at central medical campuses. Well-intentioned engagement efforts that fail to understand the unique needs and motivations of community-based faculty can fall short. We present 10 tips for effective engagement of community-based DME faculty. These tips are rooted in the literature and can provide important context for productive faculty engagement in the DME setting.

Keywords

• Faculty engagement
• Faculty development
• Distributed medical education
• Regional medical campus
• rural medical education