ABSTRACT
Reports on the role of residents as teachers have appeared in the medical literature for more than 30 years citing improvement in the knowledge and interactive skills of residents in addition to benefits to students. Teaching by residents traditionally complements that of attending physicians: clinical principles taught by faculty in lecture formats are applied in the context of patient care, where resident-student interaction is common. Residents are effective teachers in these settings because they focus on practical aspects of care and understand the needs of students. They often are better suited, for example, to teaching basic technical skills than staff members who have become less conscious of the individual steps needed by the novice to master a given procedure. Being closer in age, the near peer status of residents makes them more approachable for "stupid questions" than members of the faculty.
