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Learning to Lead: Facilitating Leadership Skills through Peer and Faculty Feedback in a Team‐Based Anatomy Course
Author(s) -
Halasz Sasha Renee’,
Ansari Mohammad Humza,
Pawlina Wojciech,
Lachman Nirusha
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.30.1_supplement.566.3
Subject(s) - psychology , medical education , assertiveness , excellence , health care , curriculum , peer feedback , pedagogy , medicine , social psychology , political science , law
Leadership, among other non‐technical discipline‐independent skills, has been identified as an important parameter in promoting patient safety and quality improvement in healthcare. While literature suggests that early exposure to non‐technical skill development positively correlates with improved technical skill, incorporating this into medical school curricula remains challenging. For first‐year medical students, team‐based learning environments provide an opportunity to demonstrate and reflect on leadership roles when assessment of non‐technical skills is incorporated as a formal component of their final grade. At Mayo Medical School, 20% (subjective faculty (10%) and peer (10%)) of the final anatomy and histology grade is awarded for performance of non‐technical skills. As part of our quality improvement initiative, we analyzed five consecutive years of data regarding leadership feedback in order to better understand: (1) student interpretation of leadership (2) student level of confidence in displaying leadership skills (3) student ability to critically assess leadership skills. Quantitative data from self and peer assessment were compared with qualitative analysis of leader and peer reflections. We found that leader assertiveness or lack thereof was a common theme in written feedback to team leaders, being mentioned at least once in 69% of all groups. We also discovered that 71% of leaders gave themselves a score lower than the aggregate team member score on leadership metrics. Despite this, score assignment on several individual components of leadership including respect, integrity, responsibility, compassion, problem‐solving, commitment to excellence, and overall professionalism was highly congruent between leaders and team members; leader selfscores matched aggregate team scores within two points 90% of the time. These results suggest that first‐year medical students strongly associate a proper level of assertiveness with leadership skills, are less confident in their own leadership abilities than the peers they are leading, and tend to agree with peers on relative areas of leadership strengths and weaknesses. Better understanding of medical student perception of leadership will help to direct leadership skill discussion during faculty‐driven direct feedback sessions.