Working with the "problem" resident: guidelines for definition and intervention.

Clinical teachers often work with residents whom they view as "difficult." For some, it is a knowledge deficit that first alerts them to a problem; for others, it is an attitudinal problem or distressing behavior. The goal of this article is to describe a framework for identifying residents' problems and to outline strategies for intervention. When teachers first suspect a problem, they should try to define the resident's troubling behavior, …