E. M. White1, P. S. Yoo1 1Yale New Haven Health,Surgery,New Haven, CONNECTICUT, USA
Introduction: Assessment of teaching faculty by trainees is required by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and is key to maintaining and improving the quality of training programs. However, there may be barriers, both actual or perceived, to residents providing candid assessment of teaching faculty. We hypothesized that some barriers exist because these evaluations are typically managed by departments or administrative bodies that remain arcane to residents. We therefore present results of a pilot program in a single surgical residency that was implemented to maximize transparency and anonymity to increase quality and participation in faculty evaluation by surgical residents.
Methods: A qualitative survey was electronically distributed to all residents in a single university-affiliated surgical residency to understand their beliefs regarding barriers to effective evaluation of teaching faculty. Themes were identified and led to development of a novel evaluation system. In this pilot, an online faculty evaluation form was designed by surgical residents, departmental leaders, and experts in teaching and assessment. The form was then distributed by residents to all PGY 2-5 residents without involvement of department staff or attendings. A resident panel then collected and reviewed evaluations, and presented aggregate data to departmental leaders. A post-intervention survey was administered six weeks later to assess whether the intervention ameliorated concerns detected in the pre-intervention survey.
Results: 55 residents participated in the pre-intervention survey (72.3% response rate) and 37 residents (62.7%) participated in the post-intervention survey. Prior to the intervention, 14 residents perceived “fear of retribution,” 19 had “concern about anonymity,” 30 were “unclear if/how the evaluation will be used”, and 16 identified “time consuming” as barriers to effective evaluation. The post-intervention survey demonstrated statistically significant improvement for concerns of retribution, anonymity, and utility. 5x more residents in the post-intervention survey stated that they perceived no barriers to evaluation of faculty.
Conclusion: We present here the first pilot of a strategy for surgical trainees to administer their own evaluations of surgical teaching faculty. Implementing this transparency-focused strategy significantly reduced barriers to residents’ evaluations regarding anonymity, retribution, and utility. Future modifications to this new evaluation system will focus on improving the perceived time burden that residents reported was an ongoing barrier to submitting evaluations. Assessment of the quality of evaluations will require further study.
