Assessing student perceptions of the clinical teachers' performance during early clinical exposure.

Background: The clinical teachers' attributes can be grouped into physician competencies, teacher competencies, and personal characteristics. Global performance is considered the clinical teacher's capacity to facilitate an active and stimulating learning process for medical students and a warm, supportive, and pleasant environment.

Aim: To determine which attributes of the clinical teacher influence their global performance from the students' point of view.

Material and methods: The Role Model Apperception Tool questionnaire (RoMAT) was answered by 133 second-year medical students at the University of Chile during 2018.

Results: The students assessed 37 clinical teachers. Teaching competencies had the higher influence in global performance. Personal characteristics also had a significant influence. Physician competencies had an indirect influence on teaching competencies. The model obtained 88% of the explained variance of the teacher's global performance.

Conclusions: This study showed that teacher competencies, personal characteristics, and physician competencies are qualities that influence the perception of the global performance of clinical teachers.