The purpose of gathering and reflecting upon colleague feedback is to understand how the range of people you work with view your practice; to help you identify areas of strength and development; to highlight changes you could make to improve the care or services you provide; and to evaluate whether changes you have made to your practice in light of earlier feedback have had a positive impact.
At least once in your revalidation cycle you must collect, reflect on, and discuss at your annual appraisal, feedback from your colleagues.
The colleagues who are asked to give feedback must be chosen from across your whole scope of practice, and must include people from a range of different roles who may not be doctors.
You must choose colleagues impartially and be able to explain to your appraiser, if asked, why you have chosen the colleagues who have given your feedback.
Wherever possible you should use standard questionnaires that have been validated and are independently administered to maintain objectivity and confidentiality. You must agree any alternative approaches with your responsible officer.
You must reflect on what the feedback means for your current and future practice.
All doctors in Wales have access to Orbit360, an approved on-line resource to support the collection of patient and colleague feedback.
Colleague feedback should coverall of the different types of work you do across your whole practice. In addition to your clinical roles, you will need to gather feedback specific to other parts of your scope of work, such as teaching, training, appraising, management and leadership roles.
Think broadly about who can provide colleague feedback - you should include peers, people you supervise, individuals who support your work and those who you interact or liaise with from other professions.
You will get the most valuable feedback by selecting colleagues who you feel will be honest in their assessment and give constructive feedback on what you do well and where you could improve. This might mean selecting colleagues with whom you have worked in difficult or challenging circumstances.
Reflecting on your colleagues’ feedback will help you to identify changes you can make to improve the care or services you provide. It will also allow you to identify your strengths so you can build on these further.
At least once in each revalidation cycle you must use a validated questionnaire to collect, reflect on and discuss feedback from colleagues.
In addition to the required formal questionnaire you may have other sources of feedback from colleagues. All feedback from colleagues, both formal and informal, may lead to valuable reflection.
The MARS template is there to help you, and ensure that the relevant points are covered.