Assessing anaesthesiology and intensive care specialty physicians: An Italian language multisource feedback system

Luca Carenzo, Tiziana Cena, Fabio Carfagna, Valentina Rondi, Pier Luigi Ingrassia, Maurizio Cecconi, Claudio Violato, Francesco Della Corte, Rosanna Vaschetto

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Background Physician professionalism, including anaesthesiologists and intensive care doctors, should be continuously assessed during training and subsequent clinical practice. Multi-source feedback (MSF) is an assessment system in which healthcare professionals are assessed on several constructs (e.g., communication, professionalism, etc.) by multiple people (medical colleagues, coworkers, patients, self) in their sphere of influence. MSF has gained widespread acceptance for both formative and summative assessment of professionalism for reflecting on how to improve clinical practice. Methods Instrument development and psychometric analysis (feasibility, reliability, construct validity via exploratory factor analysis) for MSF questionnaires in a postgraduate specialty training in Anaesthesiology and intensive care in Italy. Sixty-four residents at the Università del Piemonte Orientale (Italy) Anesthesiology Residency Program. Main outcomes assessed were: Development and psychometric testing of 4 questionnaires: Self, medical colleague, coworker and patient assessment. Results Overall 605 medical colleague questionnaires (mean of 9.3 ±1.9) and 543 coworker surveys (mean 8.4 ±1.4) were collected providing high mean ratings for all items (> 4.0 /5.0). The self-assessment item mean score ranged from 3.1 to 4.3. Patient questionnaires (n = 308) were returned from 31 residents (40%; mean 9.9 ± 6.2). Three items had high percentages of "unable to assess"(> 15%) in coworker questionnaires. Factor analyses resulted in a twofactor solution: Clinical management with leadership and accountability accounting for at least 75% of the total variance for the medical colleague and coworker's survey with high internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's α > 0.9). Patient's questionnaires had a low return rate, a limited exploratory analysis was performed. Conclusions We provide a feasible and reliable Italian language MSF instrument with evidence of construct validity for the self, coworkers and medical colleague. Patient feedback was difficult to collect in our setting.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numbere0250404
JournalPloS one
Volume16
Issue number4 April
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Carenzo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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