Feedback for Clinical Skills in Medical Education

Providing feedback to medical learners about their performance of clinical skills helps to guide the student’s progression in meeting expected clinical competencies. The large variety of clinical experiences and patient care needs offers a variety of opportunities for clinical educators to implement effective feedback techniques. Feedback can be considered a form of advising; there is much knowledge that can be gained from understanding effective advising techniques as well as parallels in the concepts of patient-centered care and counseling. The goal for the educator is to recognize the needs of the learner and offer guidance in a way that can be received by the learner, allowing the learner to reflect and implement strategies to continually improve their performance.