Exploring the role of self-motives in postgraduate trainees' feedback-seeking behavior in the clinical workplace : a multicenter study of workplace-based assessments from the United Kingdom

To explore trainees' feedback-seeking behavior in the postgraduate surgical workplace using a self-motives framework. Self-motives include self-assessment "to obtain accurate information about the self," self-improvement "to improve ones' traits, abilities and skills," self-enhancement "to enhance the favorability of self views," and self-verification "to maintain consistency between ones' central self-view and new self-relevant information." This project constituted a further framework analysis of previously obtained qualitative focus group data that originally explored trainees' perceptions and use of workplace-based assessment (WBA). Data were collected from multiple centers in the United Kingdom from 2012-2013. Content was analyzed to identify references in the data that reflected the above self-motives and in relation to contextual themes identified from within the data. Trainees' motivations for seeking feedback broadly fit within a self-motives framework. Trainees' feedback-seeking using WBA related to self-enhancement and self-verification, whereas outside WBA trainees reported self-improvement and self-assessment motives. Where trainees perceived WBA represented an opportunity to learn, they described a self-improvement motive toward seeking feedback, whereas when WBA represented an assessment of learning, trainees described tensions between self-enhancement and self-improvement motives. Surgical trainees' motivations for seeking feedback can be explained using a conceptual self-motives framework. Trainees need to be motivated to seek accurate informational feedback so they can improve their performance within the clinical workplace. To achieve this trainees need training; current assessment systems must change to allow trainees to seek such feedback without fear and concern about this information being used as an assessment of learning.