Twelve tips for developing feedback literacy in health professions learners

Med Teach. 2021 Aug;43(8):960-965. doi: 10.1080/0142159X.2020.1839035. Epub 2020 Nov 1.

Abstract

Despite feedback being widely-used by health professions educators as a tool to develop clinical competencies, strategies to guide its successful implementation remain limited. In addition, health professions learners are often dissatisfied with the quality and/or volume of feedback they receive. Efforts to better engage learners in feedback processes have resulted in the development of a number of theoretical frameworks to guide educators, one being feedback literacy. Feedback literacy can be conceptualised as a learner's ability to recognise, comprehend, generate, and take action on feedback they encounter during their learning to aid health professions learners' clinical competency development. Here, we draw on both a conceptual framework of feedback literacy and other contemporary feedback literature to provide 12 practical tips by which feedback literacy can be developed in health professions learners.

Keywords: self-assessment; Feedback; education environment; information handling; peer.

MeSH terms

  • Clinical Competence
  • Feedback
  • Health Occupations*
  • Humans
  • Learning
  • Literacy*