Call Us At: 313-577-1451

Office of UME & Curricular Affairs

School of Medicine July Update

October 2023 Edition

The Importance of Being Earnest in Your Mid-Clerkship Feedback

Evaluating your students can be a daunting process. There's a lot of pressure to provide honest, actionable feedback so the student can continue to grow and improve as they complete their clerkships. It's important to let students know you'll be completing their mid-clerkship evaluation and what sort of information they can expect in their feedback reports.

The process of mid clerkship feedback has been formalized. Students will seek out a mid clerkship evaluations from a preceptor, faculty, or senior resident. There is a paper form to fill out that includes a self evaluation and room for formative evaluation and comments. The students is then responsible for uploading the signed form to New Innovations. This form is required for all students at the mid point of their clerkship. We use paper forms in the hope that it will stimulate a feedback discussion with the student as to where they can improve.

Before you complete your next mid-clerkship evaluation, take a look at the tips below to learn how to make this important process a tad bit easier.

Psst, these are helpful for any evaluating preceptor, not just clerkship educators!

Infographic: "How to Provide Narrative Feedback" reading, "What is narrative feedback?" with the answer, "Description of a learner's performance typically using well-written, personalized comments. This type of feedback may help to meet trainees' desire for coaching and should be actionable, constructive, and move beyond description or evaluation to promote self-reflection and direct further learning. Narrative feedback can be either formative or summative." followed by "tips for best practices…" and "BE DESCRIPTIVE & SPECIFIC BY USING EXAMPLES" with the example, "The student's admission note was accurate & concise. For example...". Then there is another tip reading, "use non-judgmental language" with the example, "The resident established rapport effectively with the patients she carried on our service." "COMMENT ON PERFORMANCE NOT PERSONALITY" with the example, "The resident often arrived to the floor late, which limited pre-rounding, and led to inaccurate data presentation and decision making on rounds". There is another title beneath that reading, "OFFER SPECIFIC SUGGESTION TO HIGHLIGHT OPPORTUNITIES FOR GROWTH" with the example, "The student should aim to carry three patients at any one time rather than two". Below that there is the title, "WHAT TO AVOID…" with sticky notes reading "GENERALIZED COMMENTS" like "excellent student" and "pleasure to work with", "generic suggestions" like "read more", "comments on future path" like "student will make an outstanding surgeon", and "comments that are a series of quotes" like "As per the attending, 'the student consistently pre-rounded.'" This is a JiTT infographic.

Infographic: First header box reads,"Feedback/debriefing with good judgment" as the mean title and underneath "one way to climb down the ladder of inference". Underneath the heading box there are three boxes. The first box says "Frames - invisible" and has an arrow leading to the second box that says "action - observable" which has an arrow leading to the third box that reads, "results - observable." The third box has one arrow leading back to the second box reading "feedback/debriefing changes later actions" and a second arrow leading back to the first box reading "feedback/debriefing leads to new frames." Underneath that there is another title box reading "observation - name what you heard and saw" with an image of one black male presenting doctor and one white male presenting doctor talking with speech bubbles around them reading, "I noticed…"; "I observed…"; "What I saw…"; "When I heard…"; "When I reviewed…"; "Dr. Clark reported that…". Underneath is another title box reading "Advocacy - state your frame of reference". Underneath is an image of two female presenting doctors, one black and one white, with speech bubbles reading, "I know…"; "I think…"; "From my perspective…"; "It's important to know that…"; "I am/would be worried that…"; "I am wondering…". Underneath there is another title box reading, "Inquiry - ask for their frame of reference." Under that there is an image of a white female presenting doctor or nurse and a male presenting white doctor with speech bubbles reading, "What are your thoughts?"; "What was your take on that?"; "How did you see it?"; "Can you tell me more?"; "What was your frame?". This is an infographic from JiTT.

Check out other great infographics and teaching information on the JiTT app (not sponsored, we just really like their work)! It's an AWESOME and FREE app that we highly recommend everyone downloads for all of the great information it provides.

Thank you for writing over 1200 letters of recommendation for our M4 students!

We appreciate all of the hard work, time, and compassion that went into writing so many thoughtful letters for our students. These letters go a long way in helping our students get to the residency program of their dreams. Your letters helped us achieve a 100% residency match rate in 2022, and we hope to meet that same goal again this year. Thank you for being a part of this exciting process!

Become a Coach Today!

Did you know we have a year three coaching program? Did you know we have a year three coaching program? This is a great program where coaches meet with students once per clerkship to assist them in their transition to clerkships. As a coach, you'll go over the learner's CLiF (Clerkship Learning Feedback) Tool and sign off on the student's learning in New Innovations. Join our coaching team and you could assist learners through their medical school journey! As a coach, you'll go over reasoning, presentations, and basic skills to help develop the students as doctors and professionals.

Are you interested? Email Michelle Hill at gg7946@wayne.edu to join our coaching team today!

New Innovations Password Updates

As some of you may have noticed, New Innovations is updating its passwords system, which means the next time you log in you may need to change your password. This decision is beyond our control, but we encourage you to think of a new password that meets the New Innovations requirements now so you can be ready to change it when prompted so your account can continue to be secure. Once you change your password, you can always click "Forgot Your Password?" to retrieve/create a new password.

If you need any assistance with New Innovations, please contact records@med.wayne.edu.

Time to Check Your Evaluations

It's that time of year again! Student evaluations of the preceptors have been released for your review on New Innovations. Login to New Innovations today to see what students are saying about you and your teaching. Can't remember how to look at your own evaluations? See step by step instructions in our July newsletter archive!

Committee Opportunity!

The WSUSOM Curriculum Management Committee is reviewing our institutional competencies, i.e., what we should be teaching and assessing for our students. We are still looking for community input as we work through this process. If you're interested in participating in the important effort that will define what we teach, send a note of interest to hannah.levine@med.wayne.edu.

Resident and Faculty Handbook

If you have not already, please take a look at our updated Resident and Faculty Handbook. This handbook includes important information for all of our teachers, including specific guidance on our new evaluation form that includes evaluation questions on communication skills, as well as the updated goals and objectives for all required clerkships and subinternships.