Evaluation of surgical faculty and surgical undergraduate teaching

Surgical teachers are interested in being evaluated. In a survey of 89 such teachers at the University of Manitoba, most (79%) preferred having their undergraduate teaching evaluated by their students to other methods of evaluation. Eighty-seven percent of North American departments of surgery had a mechanism for assessing the quality of undergraduate teaching; 97% used student feedback. In order for the evaluation to be effective in improving undergraduate teaching, there must be serious faculty commitment, the teachers must know the criteria for evaluation, and feedback to the teachers should be early and preferably coupled with teacher self-assessment. This paper lists criteria for the evaluation of surgical undergraduate teachers and outlines the evaluation instrument currently used in the Department of Surgery at the University of Manitoba.