Talk to me about how we can improve our feedback and evaluation experience.

[rbj]

I am a recently former associate program director in internal medicine. I would like to know, from a student and resident perspective, about your experiences with feedback and evaluation.

What is an example of a good feedback session? Do you have troubles with getting evaluations and how do you think we can improve it? If you could change anything about feedback and evaluations from faculty or program directors what would it be? Is there something your program is doing that is working well in giving quality feedback and providing quality assessments? What app/website design would you think aid better feedback/evaluation?

Thanks all! And best wishes to your academic year ahead.

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[IMGASMD]

I am a recently former associate program director in internal medicine. I would like to know, from a student and resident perspective, about your experiences with feedback and evaluation.

What is an example of a good feedback session? Do you have troubles with getting evaluations and how do you think we can improve it? If you could change anything about feedback and evaluations from faculty or program directors what would it be? Is there something your program is doing that is working well in giving quality feedback and providing quality assessments? What app/website design would you think aid better feedback/evaluation?

Thanks all! And best wishes to your academic year ahead.

What’s a “recently former” associate program director?

Are you no longer in academic? Are you promoted to PD?

Thank you.

 

[rokshana]

A while back, so not sure if still done, but evaluations by those other than attendings and residents is unnecessary…unless the reverse is allowed…it’s one sided and the power shift is definitely on those that are not being evaluated…basically nurses should not be evaluating residents.

And no, I didn’t get bad evaluations…I know how to feed them…

 

[rbj]

What’s a “recently former” associate program director?

Are you no longer in academic? Are you promoted to PD?

Thank you.

I was APD for 3 years. Left the position but very much in academics. Just working on something on the side.

 

[bobow98]

I think honestly that we should get an eval page like these:

Jalen Suggs - NBADraft.net

Specializing in drafts with top players on the NBA horizon, player profiles, scouting reports, rankings and prospective international recruits.

www.nbadraft.net

I think instead of the bball ratings, we have others like:
-Teamwork: Are you a dick looking out for yourself or actually making sure your comrades are OK?
-Execution of Patient Plans: Do orders get placed and do patients get testing/results in a timely fashion? Are things missed that were discussed at rounds?
-Presentation skills: Can you speak coherently and get a practical plan and your thoughts across under some pressure?
-Differential dx development: Can you formulate a reasonable diagnosis?
-Medical Knowledge: Do you know esoterica from NEJM and Journal of Clinical Oncology to impress your attending who doesn't give a **** what random tidbit you know because they are likely not gunning for whatever specialty you are gunning for?
-Potential: Are you going to be the next Atul Guwande (I think he wrote some books, not totally sure bc I didn't read that BS)
-Clinical Research Aptitude: Can you think of nice retrospective papers to spend lots of hours delving into to publish in a predatory journal to pad the CV?
-Flirting with the nurses/social workers aka Multidisciplinary Network: Can you get the rest of the support team to work with and not against you?
-Intangibles: No idea what this means, it's intangible, but you have to have it.

And then have a descriptive paragraph:
Strengths - include quotes from other staff like "I saw him lift a patient off the floor solo, his back muscles looked really big."
Weaknessess - "could use a shower now and then"

Attending comparison: You get the point.

 

[tantacles]

I am a recently former associate program director in internal medicine. I would like to know, from a student and resident perspective, about your experiences with feedback and evaluation.

What is an example of a good feedback session? Do you have troubles with getting evaluations and how do you think we can improve it? If you could change anything about feedback and evaluations from faculty or program directors what would it be? Is there something your program is doing that is working well in giving quality feedback and providing quality assessments? What app/website design would you think aid better feedback/evaluation?

Thanks all! And best wishes to your academic year ahead.

I found most evaluations to be relatively worthless. I would get conflicting feedback from some attendings who loved my ebullient personality and appreciated my willingness to put out a plan, and others (though few) who felt that my eagerness to put out a treatment plan and politely argue if there was a point I disagreed on made me arrogant. Those few negative reviews generally colored my evaluation session, and after residency all of these issues, along much of my annoyance with life, magically went away. Surprise!

 

[paki20]

Feedback should focus on TRENDS in behavior not one time instances unless those one time instances are dangerous or potentially harmful to patient care

 

[rokshana]

Feedback should focus on TRENDS in behavior not one time instances unless those one time instances are dangerous or potentially harmful to patient care

How does something become a trend if the first incident isn’t noted?

 

[paki20]

How does something become a trend if the first incident isn’t noted?

There are attendings who will note one time instances in their end of the rotation written evaluation about the student or resident. Like that one time the student was 5 min late while the attending was repeatedly late or an attending including in their written evaluation under professionalism that the student did not wear a tie one day out of the month long outpatient rotation (this is a true comment that was included in written evaluation).

Another thing: attending shouldn't give negative feedback on things that they themselves don't follow or do.

 

[dozitgetchahi]

I agree that most feedback sessions are worthless. I also think feedback sessions need to be concordant with what is written in formal evaluations later. When I was a fellow, I remember a particular rotation where one attending literally said to my face “You did great!” at a feedback session and then took a very different tone in the eval - writing a whole bunch of ****ty things that did not sound like “you did great” in the slightest. There was such a divergence between the two that I actually checked to make sure the attending wasn’t filling out an eval for someone else or something. It was one of the only truly “bad” evals I’d ever gotten, and the fact that the attending didn’t bother to discuss the “issues” face to face at the feedback session just felt like a disrespectful sucker punch. (I later found out that this was a well-known “harsh” attending who had a long tradition of doing things like this, and the department leadership had gotten to the point where they basically just started disregarding their evals altogether.) These types of conversations can indeed be uncomfortable, but it’s critically important to actually have them.

Also, please do not ever have trainees evaluate each other. My fellowship program also did this, and it was the weirdest, most toxic and most inappropriate thing I’ve ever seen in the realm of “evaluations”. All sorts of petty beefs and nonsense came up in the “fellow to fellow evals”, and it definitely contributed to what became an over competitive and toxic environment between trainees in that department.