A Multi-Institutional Study Regarding the Perceptions of Students and Faculty Members About Constructive Feedback for Medical Students in Medical Education.

Background: Feedback is defined as the regular mechanism where the effect of an action is to modify and improve the future action. Feedback is essential for developing students' competencies and their future work as professionals. The attention of feedback shifted from teachers' feedback techniques to learners' goals, acceptance, and assimilation of feedback and impact-focused approaches. This study explored the perceptions of medical students and faculty regarding the importance of constructive feedback and the process of feedback in medical education.

Methods: An explanatory, sequential, mixed-method approach was used, beginning with a survey followed by interviews. This study was conducted at Defense Services Medical Academy (DSMA), Myanmar, and Avalon University School of Medicine (AUSOM), Willemstad, Curacao, from November 2021 to October 2022. For the quantitative phase, 75 students of Phase I, M.B.B.S. program, 28 faculty from DSMA. 63 students of the M.D. program, and 13 faculty from AUSOM responded to the questionnaire survey. For the qualitative phase, ten students and ten faculty members from each university used in-depth interviews. We used MAXQDA software for thematic analysis.

Findings: Survey results showed that most faculty and students strongly agree that feedback is essential for students' learning and should highlight both strengths and weaknesses of student performance. Thematic analysis resulted in five themes: opinions regarding the feedback, obstacles in obtaining constructive feedback, incorporating constructive feedback to future professions, implementing feedback, and comparing the views of students and professors. The students wanted immediate feedback after the examinations. They preferred one-to-one feedback instead of group feedback, but the faculty was concerned about time limitations in providing constructive one-to-one feedback.

Conclusion: The students and faculty agree that constructive feedback is essential to improve performance. The students at both institutes preferred precise comments regarding performance. The barrier both faculty and students faced around giving and receiving feedback was time.