Experiences of Faculty Members Giving Corrective Feedback to Medical Trainees in a Clinical Setting

Imperative to medical training is the observation and provision of feedback. In this era of competency-based medical education, feedback is one of the core components of this new model. A better understanding of the medical faculty's attitudes and experiences when providing feedback is essential. Currently, there are limited qualitative studies that have explored attitudes and experiences of faculty members when giving corrective feedback to medical trainees.

To allow an in-depth exploration of this phenomenon, a hermeneutics phenomenology approach was used, by conducting semistructured interviews with 10 faculty members representing six disciplines and used thematic analysis to create data-driven codes and identify key themes through an iterative consensus-building process.

Four themes were identified by the authors: (1) Elements of effective feedback, (2) Faculty members' perception of giving corrective feedback, (3) Challenges as it relates to the assessment culture of the institution, and (4) Providing effective corrective feedback as a mutual process focused on relationship building between learners and preceptors.

By exploring faculty members' perceptions of providing perceived corrective feedback, we identified actionable recommendations based on the study participants' experiences, expectations, and challenges which could be addressed involving future faculty development with the focus on modifying concepts of feedback and institutional changes that will promote an attitudinal and a cultural shift.