K. Heckman1, R. Kim1, A. Lee1, E. Chang2, N. Matusko3, R. Reddy3, D. Hughes3, G. Sandhu3,4 1University Of Michigan,University Of Michigan Medical School,Ann Arbor, MI, USA 2University Of Michigan,Ann Arbor, MI, USA 3University Of Michigan,Department Of Surgery,Ann Arbor, MI, USA 4University Of Michigan,Department Of Learning Health Sciences,Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Introduction: High quality teaching and feedback have both been identified as essential faculty skills in medical education. Medical student evaluations of faculty teaching are increasingly incorporated into promotion and tenure decisions, making it imperative to understand learner perceptions of high quality teaching better. Prior work has shown that faculty responsiveness to students has been linked with higher perception of teaching quality. However, while faculty perceive that they provide adequate feedback, students often cite an insufficiency. This mismatch in perception could negatively affect teaching evaluations.
The Minute Feedback System (MFS), developed at the University of Michigan Medical School (UMMS), uniquely offers a means to quantify how feedback responsiveness affects teaching quality scores. This novel electronic feedback tool enables medical students on their surgery clerkship to request feedback about their performance from faculty. This study assessed the relationship between MFS faculty feedback response rate and teaching evaluations.
Methods: This retrospective observational study compared student assessment of clinical instruction, as assessed by the “M3 Student Assessment of Clinical Instruction” survey, with feedback provided to students by faculty via the MFS. The data were generated from required surgical clerkship rotations for third-year medical students (M3s) at UMMS from May 2016 through June 2017. Average teaching quality scores from the survey were merged and compared with each faculty’s response rate (%) to student feedback requests. Weighted regression analysis (analytic weights) was used assess the relationship between average teaching quality scores and response rate while controlling for gender, average response time, and surgical service.
Results: The analysis included feedback requests (via MFS) from 237 M3s and teaching quality survey responses of 104 faculty. The mean feedback response rate by faculty was 55.78%. The mean teaching quality score was 4.27 on a scale of 1 to 5; however, no faculty scored lower than 3. Teaching quality score was significantly correlated with response rate (p<0.001). For every 10% increase in faculty response rate, an improvement of 0.074 was seen in average teaching quality score (Figure 1). Average teaching quality score was not significantly associated with response time (p=0.158), gender (p=0.407), or surgical service (p=0.498).
Conclusion: These results suggest that medical students consider adequate responses to feedback requests an important component of quality teaching. Further, faculty development focused on efficient and practical feedback strategies may have the added benefit of improving the quality of their teaching.
