Previously submitted to: JMIR Medical Education (no longer under consideration since Jan 20, 2025)
Date Submitted: Aug 18, 2024
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Surgical residents' perceptions of feedback: a scoping review to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement in surgical education
ABSTRACT
Background:
Feedback is essential for learning and improving medical education and surgery performance. Surgery residents recognize the importance of feedback for their development, but there is a lack of understanding regarding their perception of the feedback received during training.
Objective:
This scoping review aims to identify and map out data from studies that report surgical residents' perceptions of the feedback received during their education, analyze them, determine knowledge gaps, and disseminate the research findings.
Methods:
A comprehensive search strategy was performed on March 15, 2024, using descriptors in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, encompassing the period since 2017. Databases of journals indexed in Medline, Directory of Open Access Journals, Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources, Academic Search Premier, BioMed Central Open Access, and Wiley-Blackwell were consulted. Studies involving resident physicians of any surgical specialty and their perceptions of feedback received during surgical education were included. Data were extracted, described, and analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Results:
Thirteen articles were included in the review, with most studies being conducted in the United States (76.9%). The majority of the studies were primary (92.3%), retrospective (66.6%), and involved general surgery residents (53.8%). Most of the articles did not mention the method or instrument used to provide feedback. The feedback content varied, with intraoperative skills being the most prevalent theme (46.1%). Residents' perceptions of feedback were heterogeneous, with general and overall perceptions being the most reported (92.3%). A comparison between residents' and attendings' perceptions revealed discrepancies in the frequency and quality of feedback. The impact of feedback was measured in only 15.4% of the articles, portraying positive outcomes.
Conclusions:
This scoping review reveals that most studies focus on comparing perceptions, ideal feedback characteristics, or general perceptions without emphasizing the impact of feedback. There is a lack of detailed descriptions of feedback perception and standardized instruments to measure it. Future research should focus on developing standardized instruments and investigating the impact of feedback on surgical residents' learning outcomes. The findings of this scoping review can inform educators and policymakers in improving surgical training programs and enhancing residents' learning progress.
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