When preceptors are physicians, content expertise is not a prerequisite to teach first year medical students within a structured small group environment; preceptors with process expertise result in at least equivalent, if not superior, student outcomes in this setting.
Our results suggest that preceptors with process expertise result in at least equivalent, if not superior, student outcomes when compared to those with content expertise.
We can't comment on this as we intentionally targeted a gap in process expertise, but this is clearly a question that should be addressed in future studies.
A key lesson from UK Biobank and similar studies is that large studies are not simply small studies made large but, rather, require fundamentally different approaches in which "process" expertise is as important as scientific rigor.
Based on the characteristics of a small group learning session, including format, type of learner and type of content covered, there likely exists an ideal combination of content and process expertise that a preceptor should possess in order to optimize students' learning outcomes.
Some evidence shows differences in favour of content experts when compared with process expertise [ 20].
Process expertise was, however, associated with a small, but statistically significant, improvement in performance (regression coefficient 2.7 [0.1, 5.4], p <.05).The difference in performance associated with process expertise had a small to medium effect size (Cohen's d =.40).
By contrast, our preceptors without content expertise had process expertise, and not only by reputation; they also demonstrated their greater process expertise during the course, as reflected in the results of the student evaluations.
However, when we studied the effects of content and process expertise separately we found that process expertise was associated with a small, but significant, improvement in learning outcomes, whereas content expertise was not.
Although the device's South African origins did not in itself pose difficulties for European regulators, Disa Vascular's management did find it difficult to find local people experienced in taking a new biomedical device through the regulatory process, and later developed this expertise in-house.
