Feedback Integration

If WashU Med faculty likes one thing, it’s feedback from students! In fact, there is a whole team working behind the scenes to collect feedback throughout each module and at the end with a very thorough, anonymous form. Students are asked to share their thoughts about specific instructors, overall workload, general organization, or anything else that comes to mind. After this feedback has been collected, quality improvement experts look through the feedback and create a report that is given to module leads. From there, changes are made to improve for the next year- in other words, student feedback is highly valued AND acted upon!

If you’re so inclined, you can comment on the lectures you receive in real-time and provide critical feedback. A lecture was fantastic? A lecture was not as engaging as you would like? Something specific could have done better? Let your professors know! Believe it or not, they care about your feedback and are making consistent revisions to improve the curriculum for you and future classes.

As a module liaison, I helped collate student feedback on the module. Despite sounding dry, it was actually a really rewarding experience! I got to work with my peers and the module leads (faculty) to organize the feedback into something actionable. The leads are incredibly invested in student feedback; their goal is really to optimize the curriculum for our future exams and (more importantly) our future practice of medicine. For the busy med students reading this (all of you), it was very manageable time-wise. In total, it probably took five hours for me. But you can also take longer if education and curricular refinement are your passions!

One unique thing about our exams that I’ve never experienced before is a feedback feature for each exam question. On the exam, there’s a box that you can check called “Mark for Faculty Review” that allows you to leave a comment about the exam question. I’ve personally used it to flag questions that I thought were worded ambiguously, and I know students who have flagged questions on topics we hadn’t fully covered yet. The faculty review these comments and may even throw away a question if applicable.

As a thread liaison, you work with your thread leads over the course of Phase 1 to help solicit and communicate feedback and suggestions from classmates from their experiences within that thread. I am the Inpatient Immersion thread liaison and have really enjoyed working with the leads thus far to ensure open communication between students and faculty relating to the curriculum. WashU Medicine is dedicated to continuous curricular improvement, and the thread liaison position is a great way to get involved in this process while interacting with faculty and learning more about medical education.