PS4-06: DO PEERS GIVE VALUABLE FEEDBACK? ASSESSING THE QUALITY AND QUANTITY OF PEER VS. STAFF NARRATIVE COMMENTS
Natalie Wagner, Anita Acai, Nalin Amin, Ranil Sonnadara; McMaster University

Introduction: As training programs implement competency-based medical education, there is concern that the assessment burden on faculty will become unmanageable. Previous work suggests that some of this assessment burden may be offloaded to senior trainees as they give similar numeric scores as faculty when evaluating junior trainees. However, there remains a paucity of evidence on whether the qualitative comments are also comparable between the two rater groups. The purpose of this study was to compare the quantity and quality of narrative feedback provided to incoming trainees by senior trainees and staff in the clinical environment.

Methods: Thirty-nine senior residents and 27 staff completed formative assessments of incoming trainees within the first month of residency. A total of 151 assessments were collected on skills such as informed consent, breaking bad news, foley catheter insertion, suturing, and hand ties. Two independent researchers were blinded to rater status and ranked the narrative comments based on five self-determined criteria: extent of praise/criticism, valence of language, specificity, whether the comments were actionable, and overall quality of feedback. Quantity (word count) was also examined.

Results: There were no significant differences in the quantity of feedback given by senior residents (M= 8.5 words, SD= 5.6) and staff (M= 8.6, SD= 8.0); (p= 0.47) across all assessments. There were also no significant differences in the quality of feedback in any of the five categories.

Conclusion: Our data suggest that senior trainees give similar feedback, in terms of both quality and quantity, as faculty. These findings suggest that faculty may be able to use more senior residents to help with the competency-based assessment of junior trainees. However, further work is required in order to determine if these results vary by skill type, and if some skills are more suitable than others to be assessed by senior residents.