Medical Education > Current Research Studies: Feedback and Physician Performance

Current Research Studies: Feedback and Physician Performance - Systematic Review of the Literature

For further information contact jon.veloski@jefferson.edu.

Center researchers with support from the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation completed a systematic review of the literature on issues related to the impact of assessment and feedback on physician performance, summarized by the following question:

Under what conditions does feedback enhance physician performance?

It is important to answer this question because policy-makers and professionals have long expressed concern about unexplained practice variation that is not consistent with accepted, evidence-based professional standards and new research findings.

Multiple reviews, including rigorous systematic reviews of this and related questions have appeared in recent decades. However, this review, which is being developed under a protocol approved by the Best Evidence Medical Education (BEME) Collaboration will focus exclusively on physicians, use a formal construct of physician performance, judge the impact of feedback within the context of other interventions and take into account all empirical studies, not only randomized trials. The formal construct of physician performance will include clinical outcomes, clinical processes, patient satisfaction and costs. It will recognize that a physician's professional performance is moderated by patient factors and other variables in the environment that are often beyond the individual physician's control.

The topic review group includes 11 highly-qualified individuals with relevant experience. A brief, traditional review of the literature and scoping search have already been completed, narrowing the initial yield of over 3000 citations to a few hundred relevant articles.

The results of this study were published in Medical Teacher (2006, 28(2):117-128), in May 2006.