The Culture of Learning in a Clinical Setting: Development of a Comprehensive Clinical Learning Environment (CCLE) Survey

The Clinical Learning Environment (CLE) is critically important to the professional growth and development of learners from all health professions. While often thought about in isolation from the perspective of a singular profession, the reality is that the CLE is fluid and dynamic--changing with the varied interactions and responsibilities of the interprofessional team.

Due to the direct and unique contribution of interprofessional care teams to the CLE, accurate measurement of the CLE will be critical to ensuring an optimal environment for learning and professional growth. Despite the dynamic and interprofessional attributes of the CLE, prior research designed to measure this complex setting have been narrow in scope, typically involving a single profession, level of learner, or education unit. To our knowledge, no validated tool to comprehensively measure the CLE currently exists. With the intent of ultimately optimizing the CLE at our academic health science center, our research team developed and deployed a tool to formally measure our CLE.

To start, focus groups were held with representatives from various levels of learner and clinical profession to define what comprises an optimal clinical learning environment. Identified themes were synthesized with extant literature to develop a comprehensive survey instrument. Psychometric and descriptive analysis were conducted on data collected from 917 respondents from throughout the university and health system including students, resident/graduates, faculty and licensed employees from medicine, nursing, pharmacy and the allied health professions.

This lightning talk is intended to present the survey development process and share high-level quantitative data regarding the CLE at our institution. An accurate and comprehensive measurement of the CLE is the first step in aligning education and practice for workforce transformation and health system change. This work was partially funded by the AMA Accelerating Change in Medical Education initiative.