Education should be viewed as one of the important roles of a physician. Yet, because physicians generally are not trained to be educators, many instructional sessions, lectures and workshop presentations are ineffective because the instructional design process has been ignored. While not a substitute for professional education courses, physicians can use knowledge of the patient problem solving process to develop effective educational interventions. Both the patient problem solving process and the instructional design process consist of seven nearly identical steps which follow a basic scientific problem-solving approach. Knowledge of this similarity can improve the effectiveness of educational activities developed by physicians.