Teaching, supervision and feedback in paediatrics

Overview & Definition

A registrar puts in a cannula while you watch. They miss, then succeed. What you do in the next thirty seconds — what you say, how you say it, and what you write down — is the whole of this topic. A consultant who teaches, supervises and feeds back well turns a missed cannula into a better doctor. A consultant who does none of those things turns it into a resentful trainee and, eventually, an unsafe one. ^{[1] [5]}

Teaching is facilitating learning at the point of patient care — at the bedside, in clinic, on a ward round. Supervision is oversight of a trainee's clinical activity, with dual responsibility for the patient's safety and the learner's development. Feedback is specific information about observed performance, intended to guide improvement. These three are separate skills that reinforce each other, and none of them is optional or automatic. ^{[2] [7]}

The trap is to treat feedback as a personality verdict and supervision as signing a form. Feedback is about what the learner did, not who the learner is. Supervision is staying close enough to keep the patient safe, not lending your name to work you never saw. The rest of this topic is how to do all three in a busy paediatric service without losing your temper or your day. ^{[1] [3]}

References13ShowHide

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