Surgical Residents’ Perception of Feedback on Their Education: Protocol for a Scoping Review (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Feedback is an essential tool for learning and improving performance in any sphere of education, including the resident physician’s training. The learner’s perception of the feedback they receive is extremely relevant to their learning progress which must aim at providing qualified care for patients. Studies pertinent to the matter differ very much in methodology, population, context, and objective, which makes it even more difficult to achieve a clear understanding of it. A scoping review on this theme will unequivocally enhance and organize what is already known. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study is to identify and map out data from studies that report the surgical residents’ perception of the feedback received during their education, analyze them, determine knowledge gaps, and disseminate the research findings as well. METHODS The review will consider studies on feedback perception of resident physicians of any surgical specialty and age group, attending any year of residency, regardless of the type of feedback given and the way the perceptions were measured. Primary studies published in English, Spanish, and Portuguese since 2017 will be considered. The search will be carried out in six databases and reference lists will also be searched for additional studies. Duplicates will be removed, and two independent reviewers will screen the selected studies' titles, abstracts, and full texts. Data extraction will be performed through a tool developed by the researchers. This scoping review protocol was registered in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/yexkb. RESULTS Descriptive statistics and qualitative analysis (content analysis) will be used to analyze the data. A summary of the results will be presented in the form of diagrams, narratives, and tables. The findings of this scoping review will be submitted to an indexed journal in July 2024. CONCLUSIONS Conducting a scoping review is the best way to map what is known about a subject. Focusing on the feedback perception more than the feedback itself, the results of this study will surely contribute to understanding how to proceed to enhance internal feedback and surgical residents’ learning progress.