Usage of Net Promoter Score in Medical Education Literature: A Scoping Review

Net Promoter Score (NPS^®) has been widely used in industry to measure customer loyalty, but its use in medical education has not been systematically explored. This scoping review examined how NPS has been used to evaluate educational interventions in medical education. We searched MEDLINE/PubMed and Scopus for studies involving medical students and doctors as participants without restriction on the publication year and identified 19 eligible articles. The review clarified a wide range of applications of NPS, often in combination with other assessment tools, such as Likert scales or open-ended feedback, but the number of reviewed studies that explored the reasons behind NPS was limited. In addition, 12 out of 19 studies employed NPS to measure general satisfaction rather than its original purpose of gauging loyalty or recommendation. Furthermore, 13 studies followed the original calculation method, highlighting both a lack of awareness of the original purpose of NPS and inconsistencies in its application. Although focusing on English-language papers may provide a biased overview, this review suggests opportunities for the consistent use of NPS and focuses on NPS reasons and its correlation with other metrics. Adopting these approaches will facilitate future comparisons of educational interventions and enable the exploration of meaningful insights into enhancing educational quality.