For a study, the researchers sought to Use evaluation instruments routinely used by general surgery resident training programs to describe the quality of operative performance feedback. At the end of rotation (EOR), most surgical training programs conduct an evaluation in which faculty members rate and remark on student operative performance. Many programs had also used SIMPL, a workplace-based assessment tool that allows faculty to score and remark on a trainee’s operative performance immediately after a case. However, it was unclear how these methods compare in terms of narrative operative performance feedback quality. During the 2016–2017 academic year, the authors collected EOR assessments and SIMPL narrative comments on trainees’ operating performance from 3 university-based surgery training programs. Comments on operating abilities were characterized by 2 surgeon raters as particular or general, encouraging or corrective, and encouraging or corrective. The comments’ effectiveness, mediocrity, ineffectiveness, and irrelevantness were then determined. Chi-square analysis was used to compare the frequencies with which remarks were judged effective. The writers looked at 600 comments in all. About 10.7% of EOR operative performance evaluation remarks and 58.3% of SIMPL operative performance evaluation comments were rated effective (P<0.0001). When evaluators use workplace-based assessment methods rather than EOR evaluations, they provide much higher quality operative performance comments.
