For the Department of Family Medicine, summer months are not only a time for us to take a well-deserved break from the academic year’s activities, it is also a time for reflection. Our staff sift through a mountain of feedback from our learners: end-of rotation evaluation, feedback to teachers, CFPC Triple C reports among other things. As the DFM team reviews and synthesizes the data, I’d like to share a few observations:
End-of-Rotation Evaluations
Medical Students and Residents highly rate and value their family medicine rotation experiences across all of our teaching sites. Commonly, learners provide comments such as:
“This was by far the best rotation in clerkship for learning. I understand that this is very preceptor and site dependent, but I think that other programs within clerkship should have to be held to the same standard of teaching that is given during the family medicine rotation. Teaching was collaborative, positive, incredibly hands on so that you learned a lot, but not to the point that you felt lost and alone and unsupported…” – Clerkship Student
“Excellent learning site. Approachable physician group all happy to help learners. Enjoyed my time there” – FM Resident
Each of the residency teaching sites has been provided a summary report of end-of-rotation evaluations to share with local faculty – I hope these will not only be informative but allow each site to continue to excel.
We have also had an opportunity to review off-service rotations feedback from of family medicine learners. The majority of experiences on off-service rotations are positive, although there is some variability across sites. In response to feedback, our education committees (postgrad family medicine and physician assistant studies) are reviewing clinical rotations and we are continuing conversations with specialty colleagues to improve off-service educational experiences.
Learning Environment Survey
This year, the Office of Professionalism at the Max Rady College of Medicine held a series of focus group meetings with learners in each of residency sites. Residents were highly positive of the family medicine learning environments, often reflecting the collaborative aspects of our primary care clinical environments.
Teacher Feedback
In the upcoming week, 150 faculty who have received three or more assessments from learners will be receiving a report summarizing feedback on their teaching. Having reviewed these reports, the feedback is again overwhelmingly positive – a testimony to the professionalism and caring of our teachers.
In addition to assisting individual faculty, a global summary of these reports feeds into department’s faculty development planning.
CFPC Triple C
The CFPC oversees a series of surveys administered annually to incoming residents (T1), residents completing residency (T2) and 3 years into practice (T3). The data sets provide us with the opportunity to compare perspectives of our residents/graduates with those of peers from other programs.
In the fall we’ll be sharing some of the key findings, but we see that our incoming residents are highly committed to comprehensive care, and caring for vulnerable populations and continue to do so once in practice. The survey respondents to identify areas for improvements – such as continuity, adjusting some clinical exposures (such a home visits), and feedback/coaching.
There is lots to be proud of in terms of our individual and collective teaching achievements and I hope feedback will push us to do even better!
José Francois MD MMedEd CCFP FCFP
Head, Department of Family Medicine
Max Rady College of Medicine
Rady Faculty of Health Sciences