Utilization of a formative evaluation card in a psychiatry clerkship

This article discusses how formative feedback to medical students during their clinical rotations facilitates their successfully meeting the rotation's educational objectives. To help students initiate mid-rotation feedback and to help preceptors structure that feedback, the authors designed the Instant Feedback Card (IFc). The goal of this study was to examine the degree to which the IFc facilitated the formative feedback process from the perspectives of both students and faculty.

The IFc contains a checklist of the 13 clinical competencies that are also used to provide summative evaluations to students. One hundred and sixty-five medical students completing a 6-week psychiatry clerkship between January and December 2004 were given an IFc to present to their inpatient preceptor at one of their two inpatient sites. At the end of each 3-week inpatient rotation, all students were e-mailed a brief questionnaire about the formative feedback received during the preceding rotation. At the end of the 12-month study period, faculty were e-mailed a brief questionnaire about how useful the IFc was in helping to facilitate the feedback process.

One hundred thirty-eight students (80%) participated in the study and returned 267 questionnaires (1.9/student, 97% response rate). Two hundred five students indicated on 77% of the questionnaires returned that they received mid-rotation feedback and of those, 84% revealed that feedback was helpful. Eighty-five percent of the students received mid-rotation feedback when they used the IFc and only 69% received mid-rotation feedback without the IFc. A majority of the 14 faculty serving as inpatient preceptors during the study period found the cards useful for stimulating feedback discussions, for reducing the stress of providing feedback, and for getting students to request feedback.

The results of this pilot study are not definitive, but they do indicate that the Instant Feedback card (IFc) did facilitate the process and structure of providing and receiving formative feedback as indicated by a significantly greater number of students receiving formative feedback when they used the IFc.