What are Supervisor Perceptions of Clinical Placement Sign-off Forms for Medical Students?

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Clinical Assessment
• Undergraduate Medical Training

Background:

• Medical students require supervisor evaluations for clinical rotations.
• Existing evaluations show weak correlation with other educational assessments.
• This study addresses supervisor perceptions of the sign-off process.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine clinical supervisor perceptions of the end-of-placement sign-off process.
• To identify areas for improvement in medical student evaluations.
• To inform undergraduate medical education curriculum reform.

Main Methods:

• Recruited clinical supervisors for feedback on the sign-off process.
• Collected responses from 59 Year 3 supervisors (36.6% response rate).
• Employed a mixed methods approach with statistical and thematic analyses.

Main Results:

• Positives: accountability, feasibility, continuity. Negatives: inflexibility, limited contact, psychometric concerns.
• General Practice (GP) supervisors reported more contact time and adequate supervision time.
• More hospital-based supervisors (Medicine, Surgery) desired changes to the sign-off model than GP supervisors.

Conclusions:

• Supervisor perceptions of the clinical sign-off process offer insights for curriculum reform.
• Hospital supervisors' lower positivity linked to working practices (shared loads, shorter rotations).
• Recommendations include tailored requirements for GP vs. hospital settings, multi-source feedback, and optimized supervision time.