Medical Student Evaluations of EM clerkships

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roja

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Anyone used or seen these?

Not attendings evaluating an EM clerkship, but medical students evaluating the clerkship (what works/doesn't work, etc)

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Yeah, my school routinely does these. I think a lot of good has come from them and the rotation is constantly improving. We also have the opportunity to evaluate each attending and resident that we work with, don't know how much those help.
I'm all for it, but I think some people are stupid about how they use it. It's not a chance to whine and complain, it's a chance for constructive criticism.
 
I'm not quite sure if you're asking about the method or the content of evals, or both.

I've only used online evals like e-value. They're pretty good, but I'm sure cheaper programs like survey monkey will work just as well, just minus the security/confidentiality precautions maybe.

As far as content, I think it needs to be appropriate to the EM rotation, not just a bunch of generic questions like, "how would you rate teaching on rounds?" Let me know if you are interested in hearing what I think would be good questions.

A mix of Likert for quant and comment for qual options are good for each question you want answered.

For resident/faculty evals, I think it is important to emphasize that the responses will be collated and shown to the individuals at a later time, to maximize confidentiality.

I also agree w/ DocVirk, emphasize that comments should be constructive not a b****-out.

Also, if you want prompt responses, the longer the eval the less likely that will happen.

Sorry if any of this was basic, hope it helps! :D
 
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For our required rotations my school has instituted an online system with daily e-mails to bug you until you fill out evaluations on the rotation and residents and attendings. There is space for comments but a lot of the questions seem to be generic. I just started my first elective rotation and there is a form they want with specific questions and feedback for the the program. It's nice because it's more designed for the specific elective and site as opposed to my school's more generic ones.
 
Anyone used or seen these?

Not attendings evaluating an EM clerkship, but medical students evaluating the clerkship (what works/doesn't work, etc)

Our school uses E*Value. It is pretty thorough as we can evaluate individual residents, attendings, duty hours, etc. I think each rotation can add whichever catagories it likes. It only takes about 5-10 minutes to fill it out and the rotation coordinators seem to take our responses seriously.
 
Every clerkship our school offers asks us to fill out evals of the clerkship as a whole and then for individual attendings and residents. They even ask for a written area to specifically ask what could be improved or changed. Some clerkship directors are more attentive to the comments than others, but on the whole I think they make a difference. For our psych rotation this year they have dramatically changed things from the beginning of the year to the end of the year because of constructive comments (add these lectures, get rid of these lectures, add this rotation, etc).

One pet peeve I have is students using these evals to be immature and petty. Never use foul language. Never call attendings names. Student evals like this negate students' evals that are serious in nature and have some real substance to them.
 
I don't know if my school uses this for rotations but we did evals for M1/2 courses and I thought it was pretty good. I think it would be great if these were used for clerkships however there certainly is a wide range of experiences among different students on the same service.
 
Thanks guys for the input. I am trying to build one...
 
We have a system at USF that has both overall clerkship evaluation and evaluation of individual attendings and residents on Likert scales. The evals have places for comments about lectures, procedure labs, shifts, patient care, bedside teaching, exams, usefulness of textbooks and a general comments section for discussion of strengths and weaknesses of the clerkship.

I also liked that we were asked by the clerkship director if anyone stuck out as particularly worthy of recognition for their teaching and I nominated one of the nurses (who along with other staff members are often forgotten on such surveys and can make the difference between a great experience and a not-so-hot one).
 
Thanks guys for the input. I am trying to build one...

Roja, want me to send you a copy of the feedback form I have for my current rotation? It's simple but I personally like it.
 
would love it!
 
Thanks guys for the input. I am trying to build one...

This might not help much but at both of the places I rotated the CDs were so cool that when they asked me "what can we do to improve the rotation" I just told them what I thought.

I guess my point would be that there is probably no substitute for having the CD check in with the students from time to time.

Also if I were in charge of this I would probably have different systems for querying M4s going into EM and our other colleagues.

What the girl who matches at a good EM program thought could be done to improve the clerkship? Maybe worthwhile.

What the guy going into Ophtho didn't like about his night shifts in the ED? Eh.
 
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