Learning Conversations with Trainees: An Undervalued but Useful EBM Learning Opportunity for Clinical Supervisors

Abstract

Phenomenon: Supervisors and trainees can learn skills related to evidence-based medicine from each other in the workplace by collaborating and interacting, in this way benefiting from each other’s strengths. This study explores supervisors’ perceptions of how they currently learn evidence-based medicine by engaging in learning conversations with their trainee. Approach: Semi-structured, video-stimulated elicitation interviews were held with twenty-two Dutch and Belgian supervisors in general practice. Supervisors were shown fragments of their video-recorded learning conversations, allowing them to reflect. Recorded interviews were analyzed using a grounded theory-based approach.Findings: Supervisors did not immediately perceive workplace learning conversations as an opportunity to learn evidence-based medicine from their trainee. They mostly saw these conversations as a learning opportunity for trainees and a chance to maintain the quality of care within their practice. Nevertheless, during the interviews, supervisors did acknowledge that learning conversations help them to gain up-to-date knowledge and search skills or more awareness of their own knowledge or gaps in their knowledge. Not identified as a learning outcome was how to apply evidence-based medicine within a clinical practice by combining evidence with clinical expertise and the patient’s preferences. Insights: Supervisors acknowledge that they learn elements of the three aspects of evidence-based medicine by having learning conversations with their trainee, but they currently see this as secondary to the trainee’s learning process. Emphasizing opportunities for bidirectional learning could improve learning of evidence-based medicine during workplace learning conversations.