Effective clinical feedback provision to ambulance clinicians: a literature review
Abstract
Background
Clinical feedback provision to health professionals is advocated to benefit both clinical development and work engagement.
Aim
This literature review aims to develop recommendations for effective clinical feedback provision by examining mechanisms that exist specifically for ambulance clinicians.
Method:
A systematic search of contemporary literature identified 15 research papers and four articles, which were included for review and narrative synthesis.
Findings
The initial identification of practice that requires improvement, together with an understanding of the practitioners' baseline attitudes, is important. While minimising resource demands will improve sustainability, repeated interaction with clinicians will benefit effectiveness. Provision should be balanced and timely, and who delivers feedback is significant. Clinical outcome feedback not restricted to specific conditions requires further consideration of which incidents will initiate feedback and what information will be supplied.
Conclusion
Feedback has been shown to improve clinical performance but demonstrating subsequent benefits to patient outcomes has proved more difficult.
The World Health Organization (WHO) advocates effective provision of feedback on health professionals' clinical performance (Flottorp et al, 2010). Feedback may facilitate continuing professional development (CPD) (Ivers et al, 2012; Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), 2017) and may increase engagement with work (Bakker et al, 2008), which in turn is associated with improved healthcare delivery (The King's Fund, 2015) and better staff wellbeing (Engage for Success, 2012). Despite the potential benefits and advocacy of feedback, studies from across the world have repeatedly confirmed the dearth of clinical performance feedback provision for ambulance clinicians (O'Hara et al, 2015; Hodell et al, 2016; Cash et al, 2017; Hörberg et al, 2017; McClelland et al, 2017; Morrison et al, 2017).
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