Teacher Identity of pediatricians at university hospitals in Germany

Background The quality of teaching in pediatrics is largely determined by the individual attitudes of colleagues to teaching, their knowledge and their individual commitment. With the aim of continuous improvement in teaching, these attitudes should come more into focus and be reflected.Research question and methodology We investigated pediatricians' self-perception as teachers, their attitude towards teaching and their expectations of teaching at six German university hospitals. For this purpose, a questionnaire on the so-called "teacher identity" (TI) was translated from American into German and used for the first time. The questionnaire on TI is composed of nine subscales: i) global TI, ii) feeling intrinsic satisfaction from teaching, iii) having knowledge and skill about teaching, iv) belonging to a group of teachers, v) believing that being a doctor means being a teacher, vi) feeling responsibility to teach, vii) sharing clinical expertise, viii) receiving rewards for teaching and ix) future desired outcomes as a teacher.Results and discussion A total of 252 colleagues participated in the survey. On the one hand, there was a high degree of identification with teaching, but on the other hand, there were also areas with room for improvement. Men showed higher TI values than women. Colleagues intending to work or already working in a university hospital showed likewise higher TI values. We did not find any differences between the university hospitals participating. In addition, data on teaching performance and training completed in the area of teaching demonstrated a high level of commitment of pediatricians in student teaching.