Fostering conversation and co-regulation: how medical students experience co-creating narrative feedback

Narrative feedback commonly involves unidirectional delivery of information from faculty to student. Given the combined formative and summative role of narrative feedback in medical student education, efforts to engage students in the creation of narrative feedback are warranted. Such efforts would benefit from understanding how students are impacted by being involved in co-creating narrative feedback.

As part of an effort to develop a system to empower students to contribute to narrative feedback, this study explored medical students' experience with co-creating narrative feedback with faculty. This system was implemented during an advanced clinical elective in pediatric emergency medicine from July 2023 to December 2024. Initial thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with all 12 medical students participating in this novel narrative feedback system prompted analysis of the resulting 172 instances of narrative feedback to further inform thematic development.

Students described the process of co-creating narrative feedback as impacting both their social and personal feedback experiences, captured by three themes. First, the process engendered higher quality oral as well as narrative feedback. Second, the process helped students solicit feedback while fostering their rapport with faculty, leading to safer feedback relationships. Finally, the process resulted in increased self-direction as students increasingly set goals, planned and assessed their progress in meeting those goals, and engaged in reflection.

Engaging students in co-creating narrative feedback may be a means of improving the impact of feedback both on students' clinical performance and on how they regulate their learning.