WS42 - 01: WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL US? DEVELOPING A FEED-FORWARD LETTER TO BRIDGE UME TO GME TRANSITION
Jeremy M Lipman, MD1, Romeo Ignacio, MD2, Brenessa Lindeman, MD, MEHP3; 1Cleveland Clinic, 2Naval Medical Center, San Diego, 3University of Alabama
Committee on Assessment and Evaluation
Despite recent advances in the Medical Student Performance Evaluation (Dean’s Letter), it remains a significant challenge for Program Directors in General Surgery to identify the early strengths and weaknesses of their trainees. This is a significant problem as the present system relies on time and exposure for trainees’ abilities to be identified. During this time, the trainees’ strengths are not being optimized and knowledge gaps are left unaddressed. If the right clinical encounters do not occur, it is possible that these areas will be left undiscovered for a significant time, negatively impacting both the educational experience and patient care.
The Dean’s Letter provides almost exclusively positive information about a medical student’s performance as one of its goals is to support their application to residency. Several institutions have proposed offering a supplemental letter, after the Match, to provide more specific details about a student’s relevant achievements and ongoing needs for development. By providing this after the Match has occurred, conflicts of interest should be minimized. The intention of this so called “feed-forward” letter would be to provide a more detailed, unbiased, focused assessment of a student’s abilities ahead of their entry to residency. The overall goal of this letter is to help residency programs provide an appropriate experience for trainees that capitalizes on their strengths and targets their areas in need of additional development from the beginning of their training. This information would benefit the residency programs and trainees by allowing the early experience in residency to align with trainee abilities rather than relying on time and exposure to elucidate them.
By the conclusion of this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Explain the concept of a “feed-forward” letter
- Discuss how such a letter could benefit or potentially harm students and residents in General Surgery at their institution
- Select content for such a letter that could be constructed at their institution
- Propose a mechanism by which this information could be gathered and organized for students pursuing a General Surgery residency from their institution