@article{10.22454/PRiMER.2025.315072,
author = {Larson, Elle and Ponsness, Lars and McCarthy, John and Keys, Toby},
title = {Outcomes of Student Evaluations of Rural and Nonrural Medical Student Preceptors},
journal = {PRiMER},
volume = {9},
year = {2025},
month = {12},
doi = {10.22454/PRiMER.2025.315072},
abstract = {Background: The University of Washington School of Medicine (UWSOM) and other medical schools utilize a distributed medical education (DME) model to train medical students in real-world community settings. An inherent challenge in this model is maintaining high-quality teaching across large geographic areas and clinical settings. This study compares student perceptions of rural and nonrural preceptor teaching in the UWSOM-required clerkships.
Methods: Our study analyzed 41,684 medical student evaluations of preceptors from six required clerkships and over 4 clerkship school years. Using the Rural-Urban Commuting Area definitions, we categorized individual evaluations as either “rural” or “nonrural”. We used Welch’s unpaired t tests and descriptive statistics to compare rural and nonrural evaluation results.
Results: The evaluation data showed high ratings of preceptor teaching across all nine teaching evaluation categories for both rural and nonrural preceptors, with mean scores of 5.5 or higher on a 6-point Likert scale. Rural preceptors slightly outperformed their nonrural counterparts in seven out of nine teaching categories, including three categories reaching statistical significance. 
Conclusions: Results suggest that Liaison Committee on Medical Education standards for comparable educational experiences are being met across distributed sites. We recommend a thematic analysis of student evaluation comments to contextualize the findings reported in our study.},
URL = {https://journals.stfm.org//primer/2025/keys-2025-0043/},
eprint = {https://journals.stfm.org//media/sf5hjqyk/primer-9-66.pdf},
}