Abstract
Introduction: On designing and leading the Foundation Year 1 (FY1) Older Person’s Unit (OPU) teaching programme at St Thomas’ Hospital, London (STH), it was identified that the method of feedback collation was inefficient and yielding poor quality feedback from FY1s. Feedback fatigue was high.
Plan:
FY1 trainees were initially asked to complete feedback for their FY1 OPU teaching on paper forms. This yielded a high response rate (100% of forms completed), but feedback quality was poor. The time taken to collate responses from the paper feedback forms was disproportionate to the quality of feedback received.
Intervention 1: An online feedback form was designed and emailed to the FY1 trainees after each teaching session. This collated responses automatically into a password protected Excel spreadsheet.
Study:
The online feedback form initially yielded a high response rate, along with constructive feedback. Time taken to collate responses was reduced to zero. However, was noted that the response rate fell gradually to approximately 20%. The two main factors inhibiting responses were a heavy email burden and forgetting to fill in the feedback form.
Intervention 2: A QR code linked to the online feedback form was designed, with the intention of being shown at the end of each teaching session. This was emailed out to all presenters in advance and incorporated into their teaching presentations.
Study:
Feedback response rate attained 100% consistently over a 2 month period. The feedback quality received was higher, with constructive comments being fed back in a timely matter.
Conclusion: Timely recognition of feedback fatigue in the FY1 trainee cohort is extremely important. Designing and implementing methods by which to negate and overcome this is important in obtaining feedback such that future teaching sessions can be continually improved and tailored to FY1 learning needs.