Communities of practice in medical education: Relationship with clinical teaching

Communities of practice are models that link clinical teaching to learning in the workplace; This facilitates the construction of the professional identity of the students, optimizes patient care and generates learning opportunities for members of the hospital community; They promote the change of educational models in which rote learning is replaced by learning experiences based on the collective construction of knowledge and the co-participation of members of the hospital community, thus promoting safer professional practice for patients. patients. The pedagogical foundations that allow understanding the participation that students assume within a community of clinical practice are presented and reflections are made so that the teaching tasks of clinical teachers change to innovative models that have a greater impact on learning and transform them into true educators in the health professions.