What do we know about coaching in medical education? A literature review

ContextCoaching has been employed successfully in the competitive sports, professional music, and business and corporate worlds. It is now emerging as a training modality in medical education. ObjectivesThis paper reviews the current evidence on coaching strategies for doctors and medical students. MethodsAn applied literature search was conducted in PubMed, MEDLINE and Web of Science. Predetermined definitions of coaching interventions and their evaluations were used to narrow 993 papers down to 21, which were included in the final review. The 21 papers were critiqued with reference to validated scoring metrics. ResultsThere are many papers discussing the merits of coaching in the world of medicine, but few evaluations of coaching interventions. Existing coaching methodologies can be broadly summarised into three categories: coaching for doctor/student well-being and resilience; coaching for improved non-technical skills, and coaching for technical skills. Identification of suitable papers for inclusion is complicated by theoretical uncertainty regarding coaching: many papers use the term as a synonym for teaching or mentoring. The strongest evidence for coaching lies in the teaching of technical skills. ConclusionsThere is weak- to medium-strength evidence to support coaching as a method of improving doctor well-being and enhancing non-technical skills, although the evidence base is limited as a whole. This review identifies strong evidence to support coaching as a method to improve technical skills. There is great scope for further studies investigating the power of coaching in medical students and doctors. This review demonstrates that coaching is gaining traction in medical education despite a limited evidence base. Several avenues of research are outlined.