PS5-10: IMPLEMENTING A TRAINING PROGRAM TO IMPROVE FEEDBACK IN A SURGICAL RESIDENCY
Michael T Scott, William Burns, MD, Brianna Slatnick, MD, Nell Maloney Patel; Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson

Introduction: Increasing demands on faculty-level surgeons coupled with stricter work restrictions on surgical residents implores methods to improve efficiency in surgical training. Feedback is an essential and highly effective learning tool in surgical education. We seek to include feedback training in our program to improve the culture of feedback at our institution. We propose the Kirkpatrick model, a framework that assesses workplace training initiatives, to evaluate our strategy.

Methods: We surveyed surgical trainees (n=42) for baseline attitudes on feedback. Training modules were done separately with faculty (n=12) and residents (n=28) and consisted of a 35-minute presentation on the effective use of feedback followed by a workshop modeled after the Association for Surgical Education Committee on Graduate Surgical Education’s “Giving Verbal Feedback” workshop. Participants give and receive feedback using standardized scenarios in front of their peers, which is followed by a debriefing. Analysis of the training module was done using a Kirkpatrick level 1 survey utilizing thirteen 5-point Likert scale questions and Kirkpatrick level 2 pre- and post-training quizzes containing 6 knowledge-based questions analyzed using Student’s t-test. 

Results: Among surgical residents, 97.4% agree that feedback is an important part of resident learning. 64.1% do not believe attendings make feedback a priority and only 23.1% of residents believe that attendings provide effective feedback. Residents agree that feedback should be part of faculty training (94.9%) and senior resident training (89.7%) (response rate 93%). 100% of faculty (response rate: 50%) were satisfied with the feedback training module, as well as 100% of residents (response rate 79%). The average score of the pre- and post-training quizzes among faculty improved significantly (63% to 83%, p-value = 0.03). The average score for residents also improved (56% to 77%, p-value = <0.001).

Conclusions: Feedback is an efficient and impactful tool to complement surgical residency training. Our experience demonstrates that surgical trainees feel that feedback is essential to their training and is inadequately provided by their educators. Our training modules were well-accepted by faculty and residents and facilitated learning on techniques for effective feedback.