Giving and Receiving Feedback

Definitions

1. Feedback: Personalized information from direct observation that helps a learner improve.
2. Formative feedback: Guidance directed toward growth, rather than a judgment of the learner's worth.
3. A shared process: Teacher and learner clarify goals and work together to put feedback into practice.

What Is Feedback?

Good feedback addresses specific, remediable behaviors and offers a way forward. Giving it calls for prudence and concern for the learner's good. Receiving it calls for humility and a willingness to learn. A trusting relationship helps both people speak openly and check that the message has been understood.

Why Should We Practice Giving and Receiving Feedback?

• Clinical learning: Practical skills need observation, correction, and repeated practice.
• Self-knowledge: Feedback helps learners recognize strengths and weaknesses they may not see alone.
• Progress: Comparing intended results with actual outcomes reveals a concrete opportunity to improve.
• Trust: Careful, specific guidance shows that the teacher takes the learner's development seriously.

How Do We Practice Giving and Receiving Feedback?

1. Observe directly: Describe an action you saw instead of assigning a label to the person.
2. Agree on goals: Offer specific suggestions for change and demonstrate the practice you recommend.
3. Check understanding: Invite questions and ask the learner to explain what they will try next.
4. Receive with humility: Listen before defending yourself, express gratitude, and clarify what remains unclear.
5. Act and review: Put the guidance into practice and assess how well you responded, as well as how well you performed.

Clinical Case

You are the senior resident on a busy vascular surgery service. A fourth year medical student, Nate, who plans to apply to surgical residency programs this cycle, is doing a sub-internship on your service, and is eager to make a good impression. He arrives an hour early each morning and often stays at the hospital until very late at night offering to help with any task, big or small.

Halfway through the rotation, you have noticed that Nate has started making some mistakes in his presentations of patients on rounds – he misses occasional lab values, or mixes up patient information. Morning rounds on this surgical service are always rushed, and you pride yourself on efficiency. Lately, Nate’s presentations have slowed down your team’s morning rounds and caused a lot of confusion.

In his eagerness to help, Nate has also started trying to take responsibility for the two third-year medical students rotating on the service. As a result, he is sometimes jumping in with wrong information during their morning presentations on rounds.

You suspect that the reason Nate’s performance is slipping is because Nate is trying to do too much, and probably not getting enough sleep. The first couple of times you caught a mistake on rounds, you ignored it, thinking it wasn’t worth making a fuss about a small mistake. Now, you find yourself increasingly annoyed with Nate, and you have snapped at him a few times about things that normally wouldn’t have gotten under your skin.

Today, Nate approaches you after morning rounds with a form to fill out providing mid-rotation feedback for him. Your feedback will factor into his overall evaluation on this rotation. Nate tells you that he is required to get this form filled out by you (the senior resident). You take the form and tell Nate to meet you this afternoon after the day’s cases are done. As you are walking away, you overhear Nate advising the younger medical students to list you as an evaluator on their clerkship forms because you are “the nice one.”

Sources: LearnWorlds outline; Canva one-pager, page 17.