Clinical supervision: What do the supervisors and residents think?

Abstract

Objectives: To assess the clinical supervisors’ performance in the workplace as perceived by themselves and their trainees to determine their educational needs. Study Design: Multisite Descriptive Cross-sectional. Setting: Department of Medicine, Surgery and Dentistry at Nine Public and Private Teaching Hospitals of Rawalpindi/Islamabad. Period: 1st March 2018 till 31st January 2019. Material & Methods: Data were collected from clinical supervisors and their trainees using modified Maastricht Clinical Teaching Questionnaire (mMCTQ) to assess clinical supervisors’ modelling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation, Reflection, exploration, and learning climate for trainees’ clinical practice. Descriptive and inferential statistics were calculated using SPSS v.23. Results: A total of 37 supervisors and 135 trainees participated in the study. The overall agreement was low on observing multiple trainee-patient encounters (Mean=3.64±1.17; 3.24±1.10), delivering effective feedback (Mean=3.89±0.91; 3.60±1.04), discussing rationale for trainees’ actions (Mean=3.92±0.69; 3.65±0.97) and consistently demonstrating clinical tasks (Mean=3.97±0.87; 3.46±0.79). The trainees significantly (p<0.05) differed from their supervisors’ perceptions in their supervisors’ abilities to help them become aware of the gaps in their knowledge and skills, ask and also encourage questions, and adjust teaching activities to reach the trainees level of experience. Conclusion: The study highlighted multiple issues with supervision regarding observation of trainee-patient encounters, deliver effective feedback, and demonstrate clinical tasks. The agreement of trainees on their supervisors’ educational abilities is lower than that of supervisors. There is a need for structured training with protected time for clinical supervision.