Coaching the Fundamentals: Exploring the Applicability and Usefulness of a Novel Skills-Based Feedback Modality

Receiving and integrating feedback is a key to medical trainee development. To assist trainees seeking improvement through daily formative feedback and deliberate practice, the authors created a new skills-based framework called microskills, derived from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACMGE) milestones and entrustable professional activities. The authors then explored pediatric resident perceptions around the applicability and usefulness of microskills.

The authors conducted 4 qualitative semistructured focus groups of 28 pediatric residents. Focus group prompts asked participants to reflect on microskills as a new feedback modality and microskills in relation to existing feedback and assessment approaches. Focus group transcripts were analyzed through inductive thematic analysis through an iterative process until theoretical saturation was reached.

Participants felt microskills could facilitate skill-building and improvement, allow for consistent, targeted feedback, and establish a practice of coaching. Participants also perceived microskills' future success to be dependent on how the modality is adopted and utilized alongside existing assessment tools.

Trainees found microskills to be a granular, context-based, coaching tool that could improve skill-building and the feedback process. Microskills' emphasis on feedback and their delineation of clinical skills that can be repeatedly practiced has the potential to provide a roadmap for trainee growth. Though microskills could fill a current need in the medical training landscape, they are not a substitute for existing assessment frameworks.