Developing feedback literacy in physiotherapy students: a pilot study

Abstract

Background: The ability to meaningfully use feedback is an important life skill especially in the healthcare industry. Traditionally, feedback has been viewed as rather one-way information. A new feedback literacy paradigm stresses the importance of student agency and reconceptualising feedback as a sense-making process. However, research on how to improve feedback literacy is still in the development stage.Methods: This mixed method pilot study explored the effectiveness of a novel feedback literacy workshop for physiotherapy students. Participants’ level of feedback literacy was measured before and after the workshop using a customised questionnaire. Participants also shared in a focus group their perceptions and experiences of feedback before the workshop, as well as anticipated changes after the workshop. Results: Thematic analyses from the focus group illustrated mixed reactions to the workshop. While there were mismatches of expectations about the workshop, participants anticipated positive change resulting from it. They also demonstrated feedback seeking behaviour after the workshop, a feature that the new paradigm aims to promote. However, owing to the small and possibly biased sample, no statistically significant difference was found between the pre-test and post-test feedback literacy score in the Wilcoxon signed rank test (P>0.05).Conclusions: There is potential for a curriculum-embedded and structured feedback literacy training to improve feedback literacy in physiotherapy students. The pilot results provide insights on workshop designs and implementation strategies for a future larger scale study.