Psychological Safety and Support: Assessing Resident Perceptions of the Clinical Learning Environment

Assessments of the clinical learning environment could allow early interventions to improve graduate medical education. To date, measurement tools for this have not been identified. We established the concurrent validity of 2 instruments that assess cultural facets of the clinical learning environment by correlating them with external program evaluation data. In 2017 we surveyed residents across 19 training programs on their perceptions of organizational support by using the Short Survey of Perceived Organizational Support (SPOS), and psychological safety by using the Psychological Safety Scale (PSS). Data were aggregated to the program level and correlated with results from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Resident Survey. Of 511 residents, 322 (63%) completed the survey, and 496 of 516 residents (96%) completed the ACGME Resident Survey. Perceived organizational support correlated positively with overall program evaluation score ( = 0.75,