360‐degree Feedback: Possibilities for Assessment of the ACGME Core Competencies for Emergency Medicine Residents

TLDR

The ACGME requires documentation that residents master six core competencies, and while several assessment tools exist, 360‑degree feedback—widely used in business but rarely cited in medicine—offers a broader, multi‑source evaluation approach. The study aims to develop and validate a 360‑degree feedback tool for assessing emergency medicine residents, addressing its current under‑development and limited use. The authors propose a 360‑degree feedback system that aggregates timely input from faculty, residents, nurses, ancillary staff, patients, external providers, and self‑assessment to evaluate residents.

Abstract

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has challenged residency programs to provide documentation via outcomes assessment that all residents have successfully mastered the six core competencies. A variety of assessment “tools” has been identified by the ACGME for outcomes assessment determination. Although rarely cited in the medical literature, 360‐degree feedback is currently in widespread use in the business sector. This tool provides timely, consolidated feedback from sources in the resident's sphere of influence (emergency medicine faculty, emergency medicine residents, off‐service residents and faculty, nurses, ancillary personnel, patients, out‐of‐hospital care providers, and a self‐assessment). This is a significant deviation from both the peer review process and the resident review process that almost exclusively use physicians as raters. Because of its relative lack of development, utilization, and validation as a method of resident assessment in graduate medical education, a great opportunity exists to develop the 360‐degree feedback tool for resident assessment.