Milestone-Based Tool for Learner Evaluation of Faculty Clinical Teaching

Abstract

Introduction: Traditional normative Likert-type evaluations of faculty teaching have several drawbacks, including lack of granular feedback, potential for inflation, and the halo effect. To provide more meaningful data to faculty on their teaching skills and encourage educator self-reflection and skill development, we designed and implemented a milestone-based faculty clinical teaching evaluation tool. Methods: The evaluation tool contains 10 questions that assess clinical teaching skills with descriptive milestone behavior anchors. Nine of these items are based on the Stanford Faculty Development Clinical Teaching Model and annual Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) resident survey questions; the tenth was developed to address professionalism at our institution. The tool was developed with input from residency program leaders, residents, and the faculty development committee and piloted with graduate medical education learners before implementation. Results: More than 7,200 faculty evaluations by learners and 550 faculty self-evaluations have been collected. Learners found the form easy to use and preferred it to previous Likert-based evaluations. Over the 2 years that faculty selfevaluations have been collected, their scores have been similar to the learner evaluation scores. The feedback provided faculty with more meaningful data on teaching skills and opportunities for reflection and skill improvement and was used in constructing faculty teaching skills programs at the institutional level. Discussion: This innovation provides an opportunity to give faculty members more meaningful teaching evaluations and feedback. It should be easy for other institutions and programs to implement. It leverages a familiar milestone construct and incorporates important ACGME annual resident survey information.

Barriers to obtaining reliable results from evaluations of teaching quality in undergraduate medical education

“…It is often the case that only a total evaluation score is given, and aspects for which there is good performance or poor performance cannot be judged. The seriousness of this problem has also been highlighted in other studies [47,48]. Despite agreement on the value of evaluations, differences between teachers' and students' perceptions emerged in terms of confidentiality and whether the results should be made public.…”

Pediatric emergency medicine fellows’ milestone evaluations: Do they all meet the targets for graduation?

“…For example, a medical educator who is not an expert in quality improvement would not typically be expected to lead a quality improvement team, as is the expectation in SBP1. Additional applications of ACGME milestone scores to faculty have been studied; however, most of these have evaluated faculty in only one domain (i.e., education) and do not mirror the broad content scope and the large numbers of SCs assessed for trainees 20‐22 …”

“…Additional applications of ACGME milestone scores to faculty have been studied; however, most of these have evaluated faculty in only one domain (i.e., education) and do not mirror the broad content scope and the large numbers of SCs assessed for trainees. [20][21][22] This could prompt PDs to consider those SCs for which a target level of 4 or greater is appropriate within the current scope and duration of training.…”

Cross-cultural adaptation of the EFFECT questionnaire into Brazilian Portuguese

“…Most of the research on medical education assessment focuses on the use of several instruments, based on the competence view that consists of knowledge, skills, and attitudes, in a disintegrated way [19][20][21] . As for teacher evaluation, there is no standardization, and most initiatives are based on assessments made by the students, with excessively broad, subjective criteria, often answered based on the teachers' personality and not on their skills, and subject to confounding factors [22][23][24][25] .…”