Why supervisors should promote feedback-seeking behaviour in medical residency

Individual disposition of goal orientation and situational factors of the working context, both generate and modulate motives to seek feedback.

We looked for correlations between feedback-seeking and individual goal orientation, motives or concerns of feedback-seeking, working context of medical residents. We focussed on how promotion of feedback-seeking by supervisors and educational environment influenced motives and behaviours of feedback-seeking in residents.

Web-based administration of a Likert-type composite questionnaire to residents of a tertiary care teaching hospital in Switzerland and mini-interviews.

Fifty-six (45%) of 125 residents completed the questionnaire. After multiple regression analysis promotion of feedback-seeking through supervisors remained the sole predictor correlating with feedback-seeking through inquiry (R(2) = 16) and the motive of self-improvement (R(2) = 0.30). This predictor was also associated with reduced concerns of ego-protection (R(2) = 0.14) and impression-defence (R(2) = 0.18). Performance-avoid goal orientation was associated with concerns of impression-defence (R(2) = 0.36) and ego-protection (R(2) = 0.48). Women had significantly more concerns of ego-protection, residents with more than three years of experience more concerns of impression-defence. Disillusion that PG-training would ever improve, seemed the main reason to refuse participation

Promotion of feedback-seeking through supervisors combined with delivery of high quality feedback may guide residents towards seeking feedback for professional self-improvement.