Summary.Medical students on an in‐patient service and residents working in an ambulatory care clinic have regularly evaluated their clinical tutors over the 5 years 1985‐1989. Both groups of raters reliably and predictably evaluated their tutors and both emphasize between‐tutor comparisons more than actual rating values for individual tutors. Tutors active in both contexts regularly receive higher ratings from the medical students than from the residents. Mid‐course feedback to tutors in the medical course had no impact on end‐of‐course ratings. In neither context did tutor ratings improve from one evaluation to the next. Both groups reliably discriminate between the teaching skills and the personality traits of indivi