Book excerpt: Essential Skills for a Medical Teacher is a perfect introduction for new teachers to the exciting opportunities facing them, whether they are working in undergraduate, postgraduate or continuing education. It will also be of considerable use to more experienced teachers to review and assess their own practice and gain a new perspective on how best to facilitate their students' or trainees' learning. The contents are based on the authors' extensive experience of what works in medical education, whether in teaching and curriculum planning or in the organisation of faculty development courses in medical education at basic and advanced levels. - The text provides hints drawn from practical experience to help teachers create powerful learning opportunities for their students, providing readable guidelines and introducing new techniques that potentially could be adopted for use in any teaching programme. - Throughout the book introduces some key basic principles that underpin the practical advice that is given and which will help to inform teaching practice. - This book will assist readers to reflect on and analyse with colleagues the different ways that their work as a teacher or trainer can be approached and how their student or trainee's learning can be made more effective. - - Medical Education is changing rapidly and this new edition takes full account of a number of important recent developments. - The text is fully updated after a thorough review of the medical education literature. - Five new chapters are incorporated: - The teacher is important - Collaborations in the delivery of the education programme - The authentic curriculum - Student engagement - Inter-professional education - New concepts added to the book include: - Content specification as 'threshold' concepts - Entrustable professional activities as an approach to outcomes - Longitudinal integrated clinical clerkships as part of clinical teaching - Integration of basic and clinical sciences - Refinement and expansion of the FAIR principles - Additional references to further reading.