What would you like to ask your audience? Enhancing feedback value in PM&R grand rounds through customizable evaluation forms with presenter-generated questions.

Background: Feedback and evaluation are important in the professional development of academic physiatrists. Yet, physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) learners giving academic presentations receive limited narrative feedback through generic evaluation forms.

Objective: To assess whether customizable evaluation forms that integrate a presenter's specific questions would be associated with an increase in quantity and quality of narrative feedback received from the audience.

Design: Separate samples pre-post intervention study.

Setting: A large academic PM&R department's grand rounds.

Participants: PM&R faculty and trainees attending grand rounds (10-50 attendees with one presenter per session). The study included 20 presentations pre intervention (across 1 year) and 38 presentations post intervention (across about 3 years).

Intervention: A customizable evaluation form that integrates a presenter's own questions into a tailored evaluation form comprising both standardized and presenter-built questions.

Main Outcome Measure(s): Narrative feedback quantity was defined as the mean percentage and number of evaluation forms per presentation with at least one comment. Narrative feedback quality included three metrics: mean percentage and number of evaluation forms per presentation with comments that (1) contained ≥8 words, (2) referenced something specific, and (3) offered an actionable suggestion.

Results: Compared to preintervention, presentations in the postintervention period had a greater mean percentage of evaluation forms containing at least one comment (pre = 33.4%, post =74.7%, p < .001), a comment that contained ≥8 words (pre = 20.2%, post = 44.2%, p < .001), a comment that referenced something specific (pre = 19.6%, post = 55.1%, p < .001), and a comment that offered an actionable suggestion (pre = 10.2%, post = 22.2%, p < .001).

Conclusions: Use of a customizable evaluation form in PM&R grand rounds that integrates a presenter's own questions was associated with a greater mean percentage of evaluation forms containing comments as well as comments meeting quality metrics related to length, specificity, and actionability.