Ask the Parent: Developing a Pediatric Feedback Form for Medical Learners

Patient-centered medicine prioritizes patients' perspective to actively involve them in their care. Medical education and assessments must reflect this approach. Current patient feedback forms for medical learners are designed for the adult patient and are thus not suited for pediatrics. We aimed to determine if parents/caregivers and simulated patients (SPs) are willing to provide feedback to medical learners and if learners would be receptive to this feedback. We then identified which specific feedback caregivers, SPs, and learners consider most important.

REDCap surveys were emailed to caregivers whose child had been seen at Child and Youth Services in Regina, Saskatchewan, from 2020 to June 2023, and to University of Saskatchewan (USask) SPs. Another survey was sent to USask medical students and family medicine and pediatric residents. Surveys asked what specific feedback each group would most prefer to give (caregivers/SPs) or receive (learners) using a Likert scale to rate importance. Descriptive statistics were computed using R software. The highest-ranked options were combined to form a single questionnaire to be given following a clinical encounter.

All three groups agree that medical learners should receive feedback from sources beyond physicians alone (caregivers: 73.6%, SPs: 89.5%, and learners: 88.9%). The five most highly rated areas for feedback were "explains things clearly," "involves me in the decisions about the medical plans (for my child)," "addresses my concerns and takes them seriously," "listens and gives their full attention," and "did or said anything that made me (or my child) uncomfortable."

All three groups overwhelmingly agree that caregivers/patients should provide feedback on learners' clinical skills, confirming the utility of a pediatric feedback form. The most important areas of feedback identified were consolidated into a user-friendly feedback form consisting of five questions with a Likert-scale rating plus a section for free written narrative feedback.