Feedback providers’ credibility impacts students’ satisfaction with feedback and delayed performance

Abstract

Purpose: Medical students receive feedback during clerkships from many different sources: attendings, residents, paramedics, other clerks and even patients. Not all feedback providers have similar impact on learning. One characteristic that is believed to have impact is their credibility to the recipient. This study investigates the effects of feedback provider credibility on medical student satisfaction, self-efficacy and performance with a trained skill.

Methods: A single-blind randomized controlled between-subjects design was used, with feedback provider credibility (high–low) as independent variable and examination of hearing abilities as the task. First year medical students’ (n = 68) satisfaction, self-efficacy and performance were the dependent variables and were measured both directly after the intervention and after a three-week delay.

Results: Credibility did not significantly affect immediate or delayed self-efficacy. Students receiving feedback from a high-credibility source were more satisfied with the feedback. They did not perform significantly better immediately after the feedback intervention, but did so three weeks after the intervention. High credibility was associated with a perception of a negative feedback message and an unsocial feedback provider.

Conclusions: Feedback provider credibility impacts satisfaction with feedback and delayed performance. If feedback is not effective in clinical settings, feedback providers may reconsider their credibility.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the colleagues from the Skillslab of the UMCU for their support during the experiment. Jaap Buis, MD, Jantien de Loor, MD, and the teaching assistants for providing time during the clinical skills lessons and informing the students; Marc Gosselink and Niels Morgenstern for their technical assistance during the video recordings, and the administration for providing administrative data. We also acknowledge Maria de Ridder, PhD for the statistical advices and William McGaghie, PhD for the editing of the paper.

We would like to thank the Master Students from the Department of Educational Sciences from Utrecht University: Lotte Govers, Margo Habraken, Atie van Putten, Joy de Vries and Cristel Wieman for their collaboration in organizing and running the experiment, the data collection, rating of videos, and the data processing and Sander de Ru, MD, PhD, for collaboration on the validation of the W&R-checklist.

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