Faculty member feedback reports

Obtaining sufficient written feedback from faculty members on clerkship student evaluations is challenging. Few successful interventions, however, have been published on improving written feedback or evaluation content.

We evaluated and scored medicine clerkship student evaluation forms from one academic year (2011/12) for timeliness, grade distribution and the number of written comments. Based on this assessment, faculty members received a feedback report documenting their performance at the end of the year to encourage improvement. Medicine clerkship student evaluation forms were scored again for the same criteria the following academic year (2012/13) to ascertain the impact of the feedback reports on evaluation timeliness, grade distribution and the number of written comments.

Sixty-one faculty members completed student clerkship evaluations in both years, and received feedback reports. There was no change in the overall timeliness, grade distribution or number of written comments. There were 13 faculty members (21%) identified as 'low performing', who were responsible for 75 per cent (21/28) of the evaluation forms without any written comments. Within this subgroup, the proportion of evaluation forms with comprehensive comments (mostly sentences) increased after implementing the feedback reports [3/42 (7%) versus 9/25 (36%), p = 0.006]. Obtaining sufficient written feedback from faculty members on clerkship student evaluations is challenging

At our institution, the majority of inadequately completed clerkship evaluation forms are generated by a small group of low-performing faculty members. Providing feedback to these faculty members about their student evaluations was associated with improved performance the next year. Targeted feedback to low-performing faculty members may be an effective strategy to improve student evaluations.