Student and instructor perceptions of feedback in veterinary clinical education, part I quantitative analysis

Introduction The purpose of this study was to examine feedback relationships between clinical year students (CYS) and instructional faculty/staff (IFS) at U.S. Colleges of Veterinary Medicine. Methods Survey invitations were distributed through veterinary education listservs. Results There were a total of 451 responses to the survey (250 CYS, 201 IFS). Of those, 88 only completed the basic demographic questions but did not answer any of the feedback related survey questions. This left 363 responses to at least one of the questions pertaining to feedback. Both groups recognize feedback importance and rate both immediate, unprompted feedback and formal, scheduled feedback as valuable. Both groups report that students generally feel comfortable approaching IFS for feedback and rate themselves as highly open to receiving feedback. However, there was disagreement in perception of students' ability to recognize unlabeled feedback with students reporting high ability to recognize unlabeled feedback (median (Mdn) = 5 interquartile range (IQR) = 4-5, 1=Strongly Disagree & 5 = Strongly Agree), while IFS were more neutral (Mdn = 3, IQR = 2-4). Differences of perceived feedback frequency were also noted between instructors and students with instructors believing they provide frequent feedback and students desiring more frequent feedback. Finally, significant gaps were noted in feedback training. For students, 64.8% reported receiving no training in giving feedback and 69.6% reported no training in receiving feedback. For instructors, 35.3% reported no training in giving feedback and 58.7% reported no training in receiving feedback. Discussion Multiple factors likely contribute to these findings including power dynamics, communication mismatches, cultural norms, and cognitive biases. This study highlights opportunities to improve feedback during clinical training, as doing so may lead to improved educational outcomes and participant satisfaction.