Faculty Underestimate Resident Desire for Constructive Feedback and Overestimate Retaliation.

BACKGROUND: Constructive feedback from faculty to trainees is essential to promoting trainees' learning yet is rarely provided. Resident physicians want more feedback than they receive but it is unclear whether faculty know this. We explored faculty and resident impressions of constructive feedback and the barriers to giving more. We hypothesized that residents want more constructive feedback; however, faculty believe that residents do not want constructive feedback and would retaliate against faculty who give it.
METHODS: Between January and March 2019, we performed a cross-sectional survey study of anesthesiology residents and teaching faculty at two large academic centers. All residents and faculty were eligible to participate. The survey assessed satisfaction with written and in-person feedback and predicted responses to specific examples, in addition to perceived barriers.
RESULTS: The survey was distributed to 156 residents and 260 faculty across the two institutions: 116 residents (74% response rate) and 127 faculty (49% response rate) responded. Eighty-eight percent of residents would want to receive feedback similar to the examples, whereas only 60% of faculty responded that they thought residents would want feedback. Ninety-eight percent of residents said they would not retaliate. Barriers to providing feedback included time constraints, insufficient confidence/training, fear of retaliation, and feelings of futility.
CONCLUSIONS: Residents were significantly more likely to want to receive constructive feedback than the faculty members had predicted. Further, residents are unlikely to retaliate against faculty who provide feedback. Addressing barriers may help increase the amount of constructive feedback that faculty provide and resident satisfaction with feedback received.