I receive weekly reminders from E*Value, a well-known healthcare education platform, to complete faculty evaluations, conferences, lectures, etc. These are usually in the form of a survey many days/weeks after I interacted with the particular person or event in question. In addition, the ACGME outlines how evaluations of trainees, faculty, and the program at large should be completed to remain accredited per their Common Program Requirements.
Unfortunately, the farther I get into my training, the more frustrating and useless I find our current method of providing timely feedback and evaluations. A field as dynamic as medicine benefits very little from static, template-based surveys.
The most useful feedback I ever receive is not through an email, survey, or anything electronic. Instead, it’s the 60 seconds an attending, supervisor, or senior resident spends face-to-face reviewing things I did well, things I could improve on, and how they could improve as an educator. Both parties are then aware of their perceived areas of weakness and can immediately work on polishing them.
I routinely try to provide junior residents with constructive feedback at the end of the day, and in return, I hope they feel comfortable doing the same. 🙂
I’m curious how other trainees in healthcare professions seek and provide feedback/evaluations. Drop me a comment below!
Agreed ! Face to face feedback with a chance to give more clarification if needed is extremely helpful, and such an efficient use of time. The surveys take forever, especially if you want to provide meaningful feedback. I’d be able to correct myself immediately based on spoken feedback, rather than improve after reading a survey evaluation which came to my email ( which I probably just skimmed over)
Absolutely! I feel like some trainees might take negative feedback poorly though and, in turn, give the supervisor/attending a poor evaluation for being “overly critical.” Consequently, many attendings won’t take the time to point out areas for improvement. Neither party benefits, in my opinion.
I think trainees just need to suck up the fact that we’re not perfect. We need to know our weaknesses NOW, so we can work to correct these things for our future patients.