When cutting into a human body, surgery students and their supervisors appropriately focus their full attention on the patient. Providing high quality feedback on a student’s performance in the moment is understandably a lower priority. But if there is no mechanism for pursuing feedback after the fact, the teachable moment evaporates, impeding learning and frustrating students, administrators, and faculty.

Using Qualtrics survey software, the Minute Feedback System makes it quick and easy for students to request feedback on a specific aspect of their clinical care via the web. The process is intended to take less than one minute for each party. After a student completes a brief survey, Qualtrics emails a link to the feedback giver where they can assess the student’s skills on a five-point scale and write (or dictate) a sentence or two. (Images of screens seen by residents and clinicians are shown below.)

Between July 2015 and February 2016, nearly 200 students participated, and they received over 2,000 unique feedback comments about their clinical skills from surgical residents and faculty. Reports of responses downloaded from Qualtrics have also guided clerkship directors in planning professional development sessions that increase the effectiveness of instructors’ feedback giving skills.