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Physician Training Survey

Physician Training Survey

The Physician Training Survey is an opportunity for trainees and educators to share their views on workplace training.

The 2022 survey is closed. Explore findings under the Results tab.

About
Eligibility
Confidentiality and data
Concerning responses
Results

Overview

The Survey is an initiative to help improve the quality of education and training experiences for trainees and educators.

The Survey results inform how we can best support and improve training across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. It's independently administered by research company Big Village (formerly ENGINE) and covers broad topics aligned to the Training Provider Standards. The College receives anonymous survey data only.

In 2022, trainees in Australia were invited to provide their feedback through the well-established Medical Training Survey, rather than Physician Training Survey. The Medical Training Survey link could be accessed at the end of the re-registration process with the Medical Board of Australia.

Access the Physician Training Survey

Big Village administered the survey through a unique link sent via email and SMS. The 2022 survey was shortened to take only 15 minutes to complete.

Effecting change

In response to findings from previous Physician Training Surveys, we:

identified training settings and programs with high reported satisfaction ratings
provided feedback to training settings with more than 5 responses via an interactive results dashboard
identified settings with concerning responses around workload, wellbeing, and workplace culture and asked CEOs to consider and respond to the feedback.

We used the data to underpin our initiatives, including:

Help us help you

Participation is voluntary but low response rates limit our ability to advocate for training improvements. A high level of participation allows us to use the data meaningfully, review Training Provider accreditation and identify areas for improvement. Without your feedback, we can’t advocate on your behalf.

We want trainees and educators to provide honest feedback to help identify where training experiences can be improved. The 2022 survey will help us:

understand the extent to which training settings meet the Training Provider Standards
identify what’s working well and areas for improving quality and safety
identify and address wellbeing and fatigue issues
identify where additional support is required for educators
provide training settings with data to encourage and focus improvement
provide training committees with data to inform accreditation processes
monitor longitudinal trends in trainee and educator experiences of our training programs.

The survey results help us meet a specialist medical Training Provider accreditation requirement for the Australian and New Zealand Medical Councils.

Consent

You give your consent when you complete and submit your survey.

You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time without providing a reason and you will not face any consequences for doing so. Contact Big Village to withdraw.

Before data analysis, withdrawing consent will result in the removal of all personal, demographic and response data from survey reports. Once data analysis has begun, individual responses cannot be removed as they have been anonymised.

Survey contents

The survey contains a series of multiple choice questions and one free text question on broad topics aligned to our Training Provider Standards. You can provide further comments about workplace training at the end of your survey.

Survey topics include:

learning environment and opportunities
training governance and management
training resources
feedback and assessment
workload
support and wellbeing
supervision and educator capacity
COVID-19 impacts

Trainees

Eligible trainees are:

registered in an RACP training program during quarter 2 from April to July 2022
training in an accredited training setting in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Ineligible trainees include those training at an accredited setting in Australia (who will participate in the Medical Training Survey instead), those on extended leave, interrupted training or undertaking one of these training pathways:

Clinical Diploma of Palliative Medicine
Nuclear Medicine (RANZCR trainees)
Nuclear Medicine Positron Emission Tomography
Time-limited intensive care pathway to Fellowship (Adult Internal Medicine or Paediatrics & Child Health)

Educators

Eligible educators are those who were active in:

Australia | Term 2 from May to August 2022
Aotearoa New Zealand | Quarter 2 from April to July 2022

Eligible educators have acted in one (or more) of the following roles:

Rotation Supervisor
Educational Supervisor
Advanced Training Supervisor
Training Program Director (such as Director of Paediatric/Physician Education and Directors of Advanced Training)
Network Training Program Director

Confidentiality

Access to survey data is restricted. Training Providers, RACP members, College Bodies and external researchers can’t access data identifying you as a participant.

We’re required to collect confidential feedback on the quality of clinical experiences and training supervision and use this information for analysis and monitoring.

Originally developed from the General Medical Council surveys, the Survey has been contextualised for the local environment, approved by Fellows and tested by trainees and educators.

We’re committed to upholding the confidentiality of the data we collect. Protecting your identity is a priority. Controls have been established to ensure confidentiality, privacy and security are maintained.

Read our Privacy Policy to learn about how we disclose your personal information.

Before we launch the 2022 Physician Training Survey, we’ll provide names, contact details and Member Identification Numbers (MINs) of all eligible trainees and educators to Big Village (formerly ENGINE). This is required to send you survey links and reminders. It also ensures the data quality for managing concerning responses.

Big Village as our research provider

We understand Members are concerned about confidentiality, so we’ve engaged a third-party research provider, Big Village (formerly ENGINE), to administer the survey. This means we have access to anonymous data only.

Big Village is certified to ISO 20252: 2019 and is a member of the Association of Market and Social Research Organisations (AMSRO). Its staff abide by the Australian Market and Social Research Society (AMSRS) Code of Professional Behaviour.

Read about how personal data is process in the Big Village data protection and privacy policy.

Anonymised data

Access to identifiable data is restricted to Big Village. Your data is anonymised before it is provided to us by removing or altering information that is likely to identify you.

Anonymisation occurs once data quality assurance processes are complete and concerns have been managed. It includes 2 steps:

Remove personal identifiers like name, phone, email and replacing with unique identifiers.
Remove or change other information that allows identification like a rare characteristic of an individual or a combination of unique characteristics.

After anonymisation, Big Village separates the data set into 2 encrypted files. The MIN and unique code are stored in one file. The demographic and response data are stored with the unique code in another file. This significantly reduces the chance of identifying individuals and protects against security breaches.

We only receive anonymous data including unique codes, demographic data, question responses and comments.

Data collection and control methods

The chance of identifying individuals is reduced further by data aggregation and disclosure control methods. This includes cell suppression and changing the classification scheme to mitigate breaches from data tabulation. Data is not reported where there are less than 5 participant responses.

With patient or doctor safety concerns, questions with less than 5 respondents may be reported to a setting. This allows us to fulfil our duty of care. To protect participants, this data is anonymised and the number of respondents is not disclosed.

To protect survey respondents, these controls are in place:

data is only reported in aggregate (for example, as a percentage)
responses are redacted to prevent confidentiality breaches by comparing data across tables
benchmarking data contains 3 or more entities in the comparison group

Recipients of survey data are Training Providers, health services or jurisdictions. They receive data to encourage training improvements and allow benchmarking.

Recipients should focus on addressing the issues raised and never attempt to identify an individual. Dashboard pages are redacted if the risk of identification is high.

Data security

Big Village takes all reasonable steps to protect your information from loss, modification, disclosure, misuse, unauthorised access and destruction. They use a secure portal for online surveys.

Take care when emailing Big Village through its website as it may not be secure.

Read the Big Village data protection and privacy policy.

When anonymous data is provided to us, it will be encrypted and stored in a firewall and password protected server.

Data retention

Big Village will destroy or anonymise your personal information as soon as reasonably practicable and once it is no longer needed to complete data analysis.

The RACP will retain the anonymous data for at least 5 years and use it in trend analysis for future Physician Training Surveys (NHMRC, 2019).

Concerning responses

We have a duty of care to ensure the safety of patients, our trainees and educators. Some survey questions can reveal safety concerns. Our managing a concern process identifies these concerns, provides support to respondents and prompts Training Providers to address the concerns.

When concerning responses reach a defined threshold, we contact Training Program Directors and training settings. We request a written response on how the concern has been locally investigated and validated and how it will be addressed.

Define a concern

A concern is something that is likely to adversely impact:

workplace training environment and functions, affecting patient or doctor safety or the quality of the training environment
health and wellbeing of an educator or trainee.

Concerns are managed at 2 levels:

individual respondent level
overall Training Provider level

Individual respondent level

If you raise a concern about your health and wellbeing, we want to support you to get the help you need. All respondents will be asked to complete a follow up section of the survey where you may:

consent for Big Village (formerly ENGINE) to organise a confidential follow-up with a professional counselling service, and;
provide your contact details to facilitate this follow-up.

If you raise your concerns in the free-text response question in the survey, Big Village will contact you to see if you consent to be followed up.

If you consent, Big Village will share your contact details with Converge International, a 24/7 confidential counselling, support and advice service. Your identity is not shared with the service unless you’ve given consent. Big Village doesn’t share this information with us or your employer. We’re only informed of the number of referrals to Converge International.

Your concern will never be made public by us or by Big Village.

Training Provider level

We inform Training Providers of survey questions with concerning responses and corresponding scores.

Information about the number of survey responses is not released where there are less than 5.

Where at least 5 responses have been received for a provider, the following data will be reported:

survey question with the concerning response
corresponding aggregated score for the question
percentage of respondents registered at the setting who participated in the survey

You can consent within the survey to be notified if aggregate concerns are communicated to your Training Provider.

Process for managing multiple concerns at a Training Provider

Results

2022 Member Summary Report

Results Dashboard

Explore the results of the Physician Training Survey through the members-only interactive dashboard.

You'll need to login to access the RACP Members Dashboard.

If you're a Director of Physician or Paediatric Education or you've been issued with a login due to your role in physician training, login to the training setting dashboard:

Training Settings Dashboard

Past survey results

2020 Physician Training Survey Summary Report (PDF)
2018 Physician Training Survey Summary Report (PDF)
2017 Pilot Physician Training Survey key findings (PDF)
2017 Pilot Physician Training Survey: Supervisor and Trainee findings (PDF)

Contacts

Your wellbeing

Some questions may raise sensitive issues. Make a confidential appointment or speak directly with a Converge International consultant by calling 1300 687 327 (Australia) or 0800 666 367 (Aotearoa New Zealand).

Technical support

Big Village (formerly ENGINE)
1800 065 312
supportau@big-village.com

Survey enquiries

For questions about the survey, contact the Training Survey team.

This study has been approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) – Concord Repatriation General Hospital of the Sydney Local Health District 2019/ETH12472. If you have any concerns or complaints about the conduct of the research study, contact the Executive Officer of the Ethics Committee, at SLHD-concordethics@health.nsw.gov.au or +61 2 9767 5622.