Cpi-Focused Weekly Clinical Education Feedback Form: Perceived Benefits from Clinical Instructors and Students
Purpose/Hypothesis:
Clear communication between clinical instructors (CI) and students is vital for student development. To be useful to students, feedback (FB) needs to be clear, specifically related to the tool used to evaluate performance, useful in developing accurate self-reflection, and occur frequently to allow FB loops to iterate. Many DPT programs use the Clinical Performance Instrument (CPI) as a tool to evaluate student performance and promote self-reflection. Since the CPI only provides FB at 2 time points during a clinical education (CE) experience, we developed a CPI-focused weekly FB (CPIwFB) form to provide formative FB to students throughout a CE experience. We hypothesized this might support clear communication and foster student self-reflection. The purpose of this abstract is to describe perceptions of CIs and students about communication and self-reflection after using a CPIwFB form.
Number of Subjects:
Third year DPT students (n=188) and their respective CIs (n=221) after a 16-week CE experience. Response rate for students was 28% and for CIs was 35%.
Materials and Methods:
A 7-item survey was sent to assess CI and student perceptions on usefulness of a CPIwFB form. University of Southern California IRB approved the project as exempt status. For this abstract, we address responses to 3 questions under 2 categories (Table 1 - has been removed). Additionally, there was an open text box for feedback.Results:
Responses to Q1 indicated that CIs and students tended to report communication was good (CIs = 90%, students = 88%). Regarding Q2, CIs had more positive responses than students when asked whether a CPIwFB form helped structure conversation around learning needs (Table 2 - has been removed). With respect to Q5, CIs responded more positively than students that a CPIwFB form guided self-reflection (Table 2).
Table 2 Conclusions:
Overall perception from CIs was that a CPIwFB form promoted communication and student self-reflection. Comments described it as helpful in structuring thoughts and setting up discussion between CI and student. CI comments reflected that a CPIwFB form assisted in goal setting to better facilitate the learning experience and focused student self-reflection. In contrast, students were less likely than CI’s to agree that a CPIwFB form was useful. Student comments described it as burdensome, redundant and tedious.
Clinical Relevance:
While CIs and students overwhelmingly felt that communication was good, CIs were more likely than students to respond positively regarding usefulness of a CPIwFB form. Recognizing that CIs and students perceive the use of a CPIwFB form differently suggests that perhaps we need to emphasize the connection between the CPI FB and the formative FB received through a CPIwFB form.