Pocket card and dedicated feedback session to improve feedback to ward residents: A randomized trial

Background: Residents are often dissatisfied with feedback received on the wards, and hospital attendings are often uncomfortable and unskilled at giving feedback. Objective: Determine the impact of a pocket card and feedback session on Internal Medicine (IM) residents' perceptions of feedback and attendings' comfort giving feedback. Design: Prospective randomized trial using chi-square analysis. Setting: Inpatient wards at 1 academic medical center. Participants: One hundred eleven IM residents and 36 attendings. Intervention: We introduced a pocket feedback card, structured around the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education competencies, and a feedback session to guide mid-rotation feedback. Control group attendings received the usual reminder to provide feedback. Measurements: Attendings' and residents' survey responses, after the inpatient month, assessing attitudes towards feedback and qualitative interviews with intervention attendings. Results: Intervention residents were more likely than controls to report sufficient and useful feedback from attendings. They reported more feedback regarding skills needing improvement and how to improve their skills (51.3% vs 25.5%, P = 0.02), and felt their clinical (61.5% vs 27.8%, P = 0.001) and professionalism/communication (51.3% vs 29.1%, P = 0.03) skills improved based on this feedback. Intervention attendings, as compared to controls, agreed that residents improved their professionalism/communication skills (76.9% vs 31.1%, P = 0.02) based on feedback. Most intervention attendings found the card and session acceptable and would use both in the future. Conclusions: A pocket feedback card and dedicated feedback session improved the quantity and quality of feedback delivered to IM residents by their attendings on the inpatient wards.