Different feedback practices across health professions in a shared clinical workplace

Feedback in clinical health professions workplaces often lacks the features known to promote competence development. A constructive interprofessional feedback culture calls for professionals to have aligned ideas about feedback giving and receiving but little is known about feedback characteristics across professions within the same workplace. This study explores perceptions and challenges of feedback in nursing, physiotherapy, and medicine using the R2C2 feedback model as a framework.

We conducted a qualitative study in a medical department of a Swiss hospital. Purposefully sampled physicians (both residents and attendings), nurses, and physiotherapists participated in audio-recorded, semi-structured interviews. Transcripts were analyzed iteratively alongside data collection.

We identified various promoting and inhibiting factors for effective feedback conversations related to the four components of the R2C2 model. Across professions, feedback quality was depending on interpersonal relationships, reluctance to provide feedback to avoid conflict, and limited time. We recognized distinct differences in feedback orientation in the different professions, with nurses emphazising team feedback and the culture of niceness, physiotherapists perceiving feedback as a routine learner-centered coaching opportunity, and both physician groups experiencing feedback as a one-way transmission of information and understanding feedback as of, not for learning.

Distinct profession-specific feedback orientations were identified within a shared clinical workplace, rather than shared feedback practices among professions. Feedback was relationally framed in nursing, coaching-oriented in physiotherapists, and evaluative in medicine. These findings suggest that professional socialisation shapes feedback practices even within a common organizational environment and warrant further research into how such differences influence feedback across professional boundaries.