Why supervisors should promote feedback-seeking behaviour in medical residency

Background: Individual disposition of goal orientation and situational factors of the working context, both generate and modulate motives to seek feedback. Aim: We looked for correlations between feedback-seeking and individual goal orientation, motives or concerns of feedback-seeking, working context of medical residents. We focussed on how promotion of feedback-seeking by supervisors and educational environment influenced motives and behaviours of feedback-seeking in residents. Methods: Web-based administration of a Likert-type composite questionnaire to residents of a tertiary care teaching hospital in Switzerland and mini-interviews. Results: Fifty-six (45%) of 125 residents completed the questionnaire. After multiple regression analysis promotion of feedback-seeking through supervisors remained the sole predictor correlating with feedback-seeking through inquiry (R2 = 16) and the motive of self-improvement (R2 = 0.30). This predictor was also associated with reduced concerns of ego-protection (R2 = 0.14) and impression-defence (R2 = 0.18). Performance-avoid goal orientation was associated with concerns of impression-defence (R2 = 0.36) and ego-protection (R2 = 0.48). Women had significantly more concerns of ego-protection, residents with more than three years of experience more concerns of impression-defence. Disillusion that PG-training would ever improve, seemed the main reason to refuse participation Conclusions: Promotion of feedback-seeking through supervisors combined with delivery of high quality feedback may guide residents towards seeking feedback for professional self-improvement.