Background: Professionalism in academia requires surgical faculty to establish a safe clinical learning environment based on respectful behaviors that span the training and patient interface. National data reporting trainee mistreatment suggest that there are significant gaps between resident and medical student perceptions of attending behavior. It is unknown whether patient perceptions mirror those of surgical trainees.
Hypothesis: Based on triangulated ratings, patients, surgical residents, and medical students have similar perceptions of a surgeons' respectful behaviors.
Methods: Respect scores from end-of-rotation evaluations by surgical residents and rotating medical students were compared for 50 academic surgeons over the period of 2014 to 2018. Clinician and Group Consumer Assessment surveys were collected from patients of 36 of these surgeons and mined for respect and listening behavior ratings. Data were triangulated and analyzed for correlation and variability across the trainee and patient experiences.
Results: Resident respect ratings of faculty were consistently higher than those from medical students. Despite a wider variability, medical students still rated their surgical faculty as being respectful to themselves and others most often, almost always, and always 95% of the time. Patient scores were generally lower than trainee scores for an individual surgeon, particularly regarding listening skills. Triangulation of trainee data with patient data identified surgeons demonstrating strong respectful behaviors across the clinical environment as well as those with gaps in behavior toward trainees and patients.
Conclusion: Triangulation of feedback from trainees and patients provides a unique opportunity to target interventions in professionalism across the clinical learning environment.
Published by Elsevier Inc.