How to Receive Criticism: Theory and Practice from Cognitive and Cultural Approaches

Mistakes in clinical practice may have life-or-death consequences for patients. Training in how to give and receive feedback has been emphasized in medical education for decades, yet medical practitioners continue to struggle with these practices. Giving feedback is difficult because it is not easy for a receiver to receive feedback. Current training programs lack an in-depth understanding of the causes of why receiving feedback is not easy. The purposes of this article are to (1) fill this gap by identifying the shared weaknesses in human nature as the causes underlying the difficulty in receiving feedback, especially criticism, using a cognitive approach; (2) develop logical principles to treat the identified causes; (3) show the shared common wisdom of how to receive criticism through a multicultural approach; and finally, (4) address how these cognitive and multicultural approaches may facilitate receiving criticism in the field of medical education.