Feedback in a clinical setting: A way forward to enhance student's learning through constructive feedback

Feedback is considered as a dynamic process in which information about the observed performance is used to promote the desirable behaviour and correct the negative ones. The importance of feedback is widely acknowledged, but still there seems to be inconsistency in the amount, type and timing of feedback received from the clinical faculty. No significant effort has been put forward from the educator end to empower the learners with the skills of receiving and using the feedback effectively. Some institutions conduct faculty development workshops and courses to facilitate the clinicians on how best to deliver constructive feedback to the learners. Despite of all these struggles learners are not fully satisfied with the quality of feedback received from their busy clinicians. The aim of this paper is to highlight what actually feedback is, type and structure of feedback, the essential components of a constructive feedback, benefits of providing feedback, barriers affecting the provision of timely feedback and different models used for providing feedback. The ultimate purpose of this paper is to provide sufficient information to the clinical directors that there is a need to establish a robust system for giving feedback to learners and to inform all the clinical educators with the skills required to provide constructive feedback to their learners. For the literature review, we had used the key words glossary as: Feedback, constructive feedback, barriers to feedback, principles of constructive feedback, Models of feedback, reflection, self-assessment and clinical practice etc. The data bases for the search include: Cardiff University library catalogue, Pub Med, Google Scholar, Web of Knowledge and Science direct.