RESIDENCY EDUCATIONAL CLIMATE IN A PAKISTANI POSTGRADUATE MEDICAL INSTITUTE

Residency Educational Climate in PGT

Abstract

Objective: To determine the postgraduate residents’ perception of their educational environment.
Study Design: Descriptive cross-sectional study.
Place and Duration of Study: Armed Forces Post Graduate Medical Institute (AFPGMI) Rawalpindi, in October 2014. The postgraduate training (residency) is being imparted in two military teaching hospitals and nine armed forces clinical institutes affiliated with AFPGMI.
Material and Methods: Fifty-six residents enrolled with AFPGMI in various postgraduate training programs were included in this study. Twenty-nine residents were from medical and allied (general medicine, psychiatry, dermatology, rehabilitation medicine, military medicine) and twenty-seven from surgical and allied (general surgery, gynecology, ophthalmology, ENT, pathology, radiology) disciplines. An established instrument Dutch Residency Educational Climate Test (D-RECT) was administered to determine residents’ perspective on their learning environment. The survey form of each resident was analyzed to determine overall perception of educational climate addition to detailed analyses of perceptions regarding supervision, coaching and assessment, feedback, teamwork, peer collaboration, professional relation between consultants, adaptation of work to residents’ competence, role of consultants, formal education, role of specialty tutor/supervisor and patient sign-out. Descriptive and inferential statistics were applied on the data to draw interpretations using SPSS Version 20.0.
Results: Overall 64% of residents had positive perception of learning environment. Except ‘feedback’ that was perceived more negative (50%) than positive (32%), other elements perceived positively but having notable negative perception (mean score of less than 3.6 on Likert scale) included work adaptation to residents’ competence (25%), coaching and assessment (23%), role of specialty tutor/supervisor (23%) and patients’ sign-out (21%). Educational climate perception by residents in “medical and allied” versus “surgical and allied” disciplines did not reveal any statistically significant difference (p-value > 0.05).
Conclusion: The study highlights an overall positive learning climate at Armed Forces Post Graduate Medical Institute, but finds a need to provide regular structured feedback to residents during their training. To accomplish this end, periodic use of workplace based assessment tools is suggested.