The Fellows Presentations Evaluation Survey (FPES) is a reliable educational method to assess the Hematology-Oncology Fellows (HOFs) presentation skills
Eid, A.A.; Safar, M.; Hutchins, L.F.; Ray, L.; Mercado, C.; Petty, M.
Journal of Clinical Oncology 26(15_Suppl): 17554-17554
2016
ISSN/ISBN: 0732-183X PMID: 27950421 Accession: 059007582
NlmCategory="UNASSIGNED">17554 Background: Evaluation of didactic sessions presented by fellows is a continuing challenge for many fellowship programs. The lack of a standardized assessment tool to evaluate the fellows' presentation skills throughout the fellowship training period is affecting this important aspect of the fellows training. Our hypothesis is that the PFES is a reliable method to assess and improve the fellows' presentation skills. We designed a 9-item survey to evaluate the following aspects: 1) the presentation (length, organization, and audience's scientific benefit), 2) the content (relationship to objectives, currency, clarity and logic), 3) the quality of the audiovisuals and 4) the presenting fellow (effort made gathering the data, presentation skills). Each item is scored from one to five where one is "strongly disagree" and five is "strongly agree". The subjects were the Hematology- Oncology fellows (HOFs) and the study was conducted over a full academic year. Three time periods were defined: fall period (from August to November 2006), winter period (from November to March 2007) and spring period (from March to June 2007). The fellows were evaluated anonymously by their peers and the faculty of the department. At the end of each period, a feedback from an educator faculty member was planned. This feedback was based on the fellows PFES scores, comments and the educator's personal evaluation of the fellows' presentation skills. Nine HOFs participated in the educational study between August 2006 and June 2007. Two hundred and eighty two surveys were filled: 108 in the fall period, 100 in the winter period and 74 in the spring period. Thereliability was >0.93 for all 3 periods and for the aggregated data. There was a trend toward better use of the scale in the spring period. Generally, the means for the questions dropped for the spring period. A feedback session was done after the fall period when the fellows were given the feedback and were educated about the need to use the scale in a more objective way. In our study, the PFES is a reliable method to assess but not to improve the HOFs presentation skills. The fellows tend to overrate their peers initially and education about the objective use of the survey is needed. No significant financial relationships to disclose.