Impact of Peer Feedback on the Quality of Academic Sessions in an Emergency Medicine Training Program: A Quality Improvement Project.

Abstract

Introduction Feedback is at the heart of medical education; different teaching encounters call for different types of feedback. Due to multiple reasons presenters are not able to receive adequate feedback, which provides them with little to no areas to improve upon and hence affects the quality of the academic sessions(1). Feedback serves as a powerful tool in the realm of education, playing a vital role in shaping students' learning experiences and fostering their academic growth. Recognizing the importance of feedback and implementing effective feedback mechanisms can lead to enhanced learning outcomes, improved performance and increased motivation among learners(3). It can be incorporated to enhance teaching and learning techniques since it has an immediate impact on the process of acquiring knowledge and has a direct impact on both teaching and learning(4). Feedback has been shown to help speakers gain confidence, self-awareness, and enthusiasm(5). Methods: We designed a project to improve the quality of our academic day by integrating feedback forms into all our academic activities. In November 2022 we sent out a survey to all residents to evaluate the quality of the sessions in the academic day.Based on the responses received we incorporated feedback forms into each session to allow the audience to evaluate the speakers. All presenters presenting between February to July 2023 were provided with a QR code to be presented at the end of their presentation, to allow instant feedback by peers. At the end of the 6 month cycle we sent out 2 sets of surveys to both the speakers and audience to assess the impact of peer feedback on the quality of sessions presented during academic day. The surveys asked the audience and speakers to rate their experience of feedback forms and how it has impacted their performance. Each question was scored on a likert scale 1 to 5 with 1 being strongly disagree to 5 being strongly agree. Results: 30 out of 33 current residents responded to the surveys. Based on the responses received, there has been a positive outcome on all domains for both audience and speakers Fig 1,2). The audience felt it helped increase their weekly quiz scores(3.3/5), allowed them to better understand the topics(3.7/5) and improved the quality of presentations delivered (3.9/5). The speakers felt it helped them in delivering better lectures (4/5), Improved their ability to present to an audience (4.1/5), made them aware of their weakness and allowed them to work on them (4.3/5). Both the audience (4.3/5) and audience (4.4/5) would like to see the feedback forms to continue. Conclusion: In the era of formative assessment peer feedback will go a long way in improving the quality of educational activities. Our project has similar outcomes to multiple similar studies done elsewhere which have demonstrated an improvement in their educational experience (2). We hope our findings can aspire other programs in the region to incorporate similar feedback forms into their sessions. To evaluate effectiveness of peer feedback as a method of improving the quality of lectures conducted during academic day