When enough is enough: Signals used by residents to indicate receptivity to questioning

Questioning has, since Socrates, been touted as an effective teaching technique, but its use in health professions education is controversial due to the risk of inducing counterproductively negative trainee experiences. While much has been written on optimal methods of questioning, disconnects continue to arise between well-intentioned preceptors and how questioning is experienced. Thus, the authors explored if and how learners try signalling to preceptors when questioning leads to a positive learning experience and when it ceases to be educationally valuable.

The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 senior internal medicine residents to elicit perspectives on how they try to signal their wishes to preceptors during questioning interactions. This was followed by one focus group with 5 additional participants. The methodology was constructivist grounded theory and rigour was enhanced through iterative data collection and analysis, constant comparison, and theoretical sampling.

Signalling was confirmed to be an important concept in resident-preceptor interactions because comfort with questioning was not universally positive or negative. Rather, participants signalled their openness to questioning in context-dependent ways influenced by a variety of factors. In addition to their own signalling, participants reported recognizing and responding to signals from their juniors, peers and attendings, further highlighting the communicative nature of cues being sent.

With a better understanding of the contextual factors to be considered before entering a questioning interaction and identification of cues that residents believe they offer as signals of encouraging or discouraging engagement in such interactions, attending physicians should be better able to navigate clinical teaching moments to optimize resident learning.