Research in Clinical Assessment grant

To support medical assessment research, the MCC offers research grants to interested faculty members, staff members or graduate students of Canadian medical faculties.

Recipient: 2017-2018 – Dr. Lynfa Stroud

The View from Both Sides: Understanding Residents’ Perceptions of Receiving Formative Feedback from Non-Physicians, and How Non-Physicians Perceive Their Role in this Process

Investigator

Lynfa Stroud, MD

Co-investigators

Tavares, W.

Sibbald, M.

Miles, A.

Ginsburg, S.

Watling, C.

Abstract

Objectives:

To understand Internal Medicine (IM) residents’ perceptions of feedback from “non-physicians”, with a focus on how they make credibility judgments, and to determine non-physician feedback providers’ perceptions and comfort in providing residents with feedback.

Background:

A major tenet of Competency Based Medical Education is an increased focus on formative feedback following direct observation. This focus has also placed a greater emphasis on involving non-physicians in assessments, potentially including standardized patients (SPs) during structured assessments and non-physician health care professionals (HCPs) in the clinical setting. However, little is currently known about how medical learners view non-physician feedback providers and the feedback they provide; nor is it clear how non-physicians view providing feedback to these learners.

Design:

Individual interviews with IM residents, stratified by level, and focus groups with SPs and non-physician HCPs, stratified by job description, will be conducted using a semi-structured interview guide.

Setting:

IM residents and SPs, who participate in structured assessments of residents, at the University of Toronto; and non-physician HCPs (nurses, social workers, pharmacists, physical and occupational therapists) at affiliated academic health sciences centres where residents rotate through and work-based assessments occur.

Analysis:

Constructivist grounded theory will be used to develop a theoretical framework to understand and explain how residents’ perceive and make credibility judgements about non-physician feedback providers and their feedback; and another framework to inform and describe how non-physician providers perceive the provision of feedback to residents.

Implications:

This work will advance understanding and theory of how residents make meaning of and judgements about feedback from non-physician providers, and of how these providers view their roles in offering this feedback. Therefore this work stands to inform best practices for how educators choose to implement and incorporate feedback from non-physicians into formative assessments of residents.