Feedback Methods in an Interprofessional Mock Paging Program

M Kathryn Mutter; Kathryn Pedersen; Tim Cunningham; James R Martindale

doi:10.1007/s40670-021-01445-1

Feedback Methods in an Interprofessional Mock Paging Program

Med Sci Educ. 2021 Oct 26;31(6):2001-2005. doi: 10.1007/s40670-021-01445-1. eCollection 2021 Dec.

Authors

M Kathryn Mutter¹, Kathryn Pedersen², Tim Cunningham^{3

4}, James R Martindale⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Virginia, 1215 Lee St, PO Box 800699, Charlottesville, VA 22908 USA.
² Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA USA.
³ Practice & Innovation, Emory Healthcare, Atlanta, GA USA.
⁴ Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, Emory University, Atlanta, GA USA.
⁵ University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, VA USA.

Abstract

Background: Many medical schools offer a culminating internship readiness experience. Curricula focus on particular knowledge and skills critical to internship, such as answering urgent nursing pages. Studies have shown student performance improvement with mock paging education programs, but the role of feedback versus self-regulated practice has not been studied.

Design and methods: The interprofessional mock paging program included 156 medical students enrolled in a 4^th-year internship readiness course and 44 master's level direct entry nursing students. Medical students were randomized to receive verbal feedback immediately after each of the three phone calls (intervention group) or delayed written feedback (control group) after the third phone call only. Specialty-specific case scenarios were developed and a single checklist for all scenarios was developed using the communication tool ISBAR. Medical students and nursing students had separate training sessions before the pages commenced. The nursing students administered the phone calls and evaluated the medical students by ISBAR checklist. An interrater reliability measure was obtained with physician observation of a selection of phone calls.

Results: After adjusting for the case effects (different case scenarios for different specialties), students showed no statistically significant differences on checklist scores for case 1 (first case, F = 1.491, df = 1, p = .224), but did show statistically significant differences on checklist scores for case 3 (final case, F = 12.238, df = 1, p = .001). Strong interrater reliability was found between the faculty physician and observed nursing students (ICC = .89).

Conclusions: Immediate feedback significantly improves student checklist scores with a mock paging program. This finding suggests that coaching with feedback may have advantages above self-regulated learning.

Keywords: Clinical teaching; Feedback; Interprofessional education; Simulation; Undergraduate medical education.