Students of all ages and levels rely on high-quality feedback to improve their knowledge and skills — making the delivery of effective, real-time feedback a vital skill for medical educators to master.
Fortunately, during a Clinical Practice Session on Tuesday, Rachel Levine, MD, MPH, Associate Dean for Faculty Educational Development at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, will demonstrate how to provide high-quality feedback for educators looking to refresh or hone their skills.
Doctors’ Toolbox: Learning to Communicate and Teach will take place from 9:00 – 10:00 am in Room B308, Building B in the Georgia World Congress Center.
“Being able to provide effective and constructive feedback is a critical skill for medical educators,” Dr. Levine said. “I’m going to focus on some relatively straightforward strategies that clinical teachers can use in their everyday practice so they can enhance the learning environment by providing real-time feedback to learners. My hope is that attendees will come away with some new strategies that perhaps they haven’t tried before. In particular, I really want educators to start thinking about how to give feedback in the moment when teaching in the clinical setting.”
Dr. Levine said the strategies she will discuss are appropriate for all types of learners.
“So whether you work with medical students, residents, fellows — wherever your learners might be — the strategies and skills I’ll share will be applicable in all of those settings,” she said.
Dr. Levine will present two models for providing feedback. She will review the “Ask – Tell/Share – Ask” model for delivering feedback and discuss how to create an optimal learning environment for delivering feedback. A key is to ensure that learners understand expectations and that real-time feedback will be provided.
“Setting learning goals and understanding expectations are probably the most important steps in optimizing the effectiveness of feedback,” Dr. Levine said. “As educators, we need to let learners know our intention is to provide feedback. We need to ask the learner to let us know what they are working on and what they would like feedback on. We need to invite learners to set their own learning goals and assess their own performance, as well.”
Dr. Levine will also provide additional resources for those interested in learning more on the subject, including information on an online module from the Johns Hopkins Institute for Excellence in Education that educators can follow to enhance their knowledge and hone their feedback skills.
The session will begin with the lecture “What Great Attendings Do” by Nathan Houchens, MD, Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Houchens will discuss common challenges faced in teaching in hospital settings and will review key themes central to effective teaching. He will also tackle issues of race and gender in education.