Learning Conversations with Trainees: An Undervalued but Useful EBM Learning Opportunity for Clinical Supervisors

Abstract

Phenomenon: Supervisors and trainees can learn skills related to evidence-based medicine from each other in the workplace by collaborating and interacting, in this way benefiting from each other’s strengths. This study explores supervisors’ perceptions of how they currently learn evidence-based medicine by engaging in learning conversations with their trainee. Approach: Semi-structured, video-stimulated elicitation interviews were held with twenty-two Dutch and Belgian supervisors in general practice. Supervisors were shown fragments of their video-recorded learning conversations, allowing them to reflect. Recorded interviews were analyzed using a grounded theory-based approach.Findings: Supervisors did not immediately perceive workplace learning conversations as an opportunity to learn evidence-based medicine from their trainee. They mostly saw these conversations as a learning opportunity for trainees and a chance to maintain the quality of care within their practice. Nevertheless, during the interviews, supervisors did acknowledge that learning conversations help them to gain up-to-date knowledge and search skills or more awareness of their own knowledge or gaps in their knowledge. Not identified as a learning outcome was how to apply evidence-based medicine within a clinical practice by combining evidence with clinical expertise and the patient’s preferences. Insights: Supervisors acknowledge that they learn elements of the three aspects of evidence-based medicine by having learning conversations with their trainee, but they currently see this as secondary to the trainee’s learning process. Emphasizing opportunities for bidirectional learning could improve learning of evidence-based medicine during workplace learning conversations.

Keywords:

• Evidence-based medicine
• general practice
• workplace-based learning
• bidirectional learning
• video-stimulated elicitation interviews
• learning conversations

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank David Blom (DB) and Hilde Suijker (HS), both final-year medical students at the time of this study, for their help during data analysis. We also wish to thank all the GPs and trainees who participated in the study.

Declaration of interest statement

The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Funding details

This study was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw) under Grant number 839130005. This funding body was not involved in the design of the study, in data collection, analysis and interpretation, or in writing the manuscript.

Data availability statement

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Ethical approval

This study was part of a larger research project on EBM learning in the GP workplace. Approval for the research project as a whole, in which pairs of supervisors and trainees took part, was granted by the ethical board of the NVMO (Dutch Society of Medical Education) under case number 706. Belgian ethical approval was issued by the Ethics Committee of the University Hospital of Ghent.