Just One Thing: a novel patient feedback model

In response to the Educational Standards of the UK's General Dental Council, Newcastle University, School of Dental Sciences introduced a patient feedback card to gather and incorporate patient feedback into their undergraduate assessment framework. The cards ask for patient response to two questions about their experience, and also ask patients to identify 'Just One Thing' (JOT) the student could do to improve this. JOT cards completed during a two week period were collected to evaluate and analyse the nature of patient responses within this model. Over 90% of JOT cards scored the students as 'Excellent' with the remainder scoring the student as 'Good' or giving no response. Many of the free text comments complimented the students and also provided focused suggestions for improvement. While the overwhelming positive responses may suggest that this model for collecting feedback may not be effective at discriminating between students with varying levels of interpersonal/communication skills, the free text comments were seen to be of value in building confidence or identifying areas for improvement.