Purpose or Case Report: Demonstrate how a pediatric radiology division at a single institution structures short-interval feedback to residents. Describe how the division collects interval resident feedback. Demonstrate resident responses to this pilot program of instituting standardized weekly feedback.
Methods & Materials: At our academic institution, residents were traditionally evaluated at the end of the rotations online and with informal one-sided feedback from faculty to residents. A majority of the residents indicated that end-of-rotation feedback was insufficient to accurately assess growth during their rotations and that there was no regular opportunity to give resident feedback about the rotation. In January 2019, our division piloted a program in which a designated faculty member collected feedback from other faculty who worked with the resident throughout the week.This “feedback faculty” member would then summarize the most salient points from collected data and have a face-to-face discussion with the resident every Friday afternoon.The residents were then given a weekly anonymized online form to evaluate the following: overall experience over the week, aspects of the rotation that they felt were valuable (ie: case mix, case volume, teaching experience, duty hours), change in interest in pursuing a pediatric radiology fellowship, and whether the resident would like more time in their training in pediatric radiology.
Results: To assess the effectiveness of this program for the residents we collected data from January 2019 to September 2019. Anonymized online surveys yielded 46 responses. Over 90% of the responses reported case variety and teaching experience as the most valuable areas of resident education. 50% reported an increase in the likelihood of pursuing a pediatric radiology fellowship following the week’s experience. 80% reported a request for more allotted residency training to pediatric radiology. Using the resident feedback, the division was able to facilitate changes to the rotation in order to better meet the educational needs of the residents. Changes included working with the radiology residency program to increase pediatric radiology exposure and establishing a resident interest group with quarterly social events to continue fostering interest in pursuing pediatric radiology as a subspecialty.
Conclusions: In conclusion, formalized feedback in the form of weekly “Feedback Fridays” is an effective tool in incorporating real-time responses into resident education.