The Impact of Multisource Feedback on Continuing Medical Education, Clinical Performance and Patient Experience: Innovation in a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service

ABSTRACT

This paper reiterates the importance of the role of multisource feedback (MSF) in continuing medical education/continuing professional development (CME/CPD) and its impact on doctors’ performance and patient experience globally. It summarises a unique initiative of robust utilisation of internationally recognised multisource feedback tools in an outpatient child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) in Qatar. The process involved the effective adoption and administering of the General Medical Council’s (GMC) self-assessment questionnaire (SQ), patient questionnaire (PQ), and colleague questionnaire (CQ) followed by the successful incorporation of these tools in CME/CPD. The original version of the PQ questionnaire and the instructions to the patient document were translated into Arabic through the blind back-translation technique. This initiative of introducing gold-standard MSF tools and processes into clinical practice, among other quality-improvement projects, has contributed to the improvement of service standards and doctors’ clinical practice. Patient satisfaction was measured through the annual patient experience analysis using the Experience of Service Questionnaire (ESQ) whereas changes in doctors’ performance were evaluated by comparing annual appraisal scores before and after implementation of this initiative. We have demonstrated that when MSF is obtained impartially and transparently using recognised and valid tools, it can improve patient experience and enhance doctors’ performance

KEYWORDS:

• Continuing medical education
• continuing professional development
• multisource feedback
• appraisal
• colleague feedback
• patient feedback

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge Dr. Basim Samir, Dr. Saleem al Nuaimi, Dr. Manal Osman, Ms. Asieh Dehwari, Mr. Mahmoud Alshamlawi, Mr. Lazarus Phiri, Ms. Sheena Shaheer and Dr. May Jasem Almeraisi for their support. Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This project received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.