Learning climate has an important impact on knowledge and skills we acquire during residency. It encompasses many important aspects, such as the quality of supervision, professional relations between colleagues, quality of formal education and others. Numerous studies in the literature have sought to assess quality of training in different areas of medicine. However, in the area of public health training, there are no published studies on learning climate assessment or residents’ satisfaction during the residency.
The lack of literature in the area of assessing Public Health training inspired us to start a working group, which will perform a multinational study assessing learning climate and satisfaction during Public Health residency. The purpose of the study is to prepare the basis for evidence-based improvement of public health training in Europe.
Literature review was performed to identify tools currently used to evaluate learning climate during medical residency. Of all the questionnaires available, the working group chose D-RECT as the most applicable for our study. With author’s permission, we modified the questionnaire to suit Public Health residency. The new adapted questionnaire consists of 50 questions divided into 12 subscales. We proposed a new name for the modified questionnaire: European Residency Educational Climate Test (E-RECT).
The study will start after receiving the Ethics Committee approval. At this stage of the study, the questionnaire is being translated via a back-and-forth process into the language of each country. The piloting and validation process will follow, before we distribute the questionnaire to all public health residents in each country.
The data obtained in the study will provide the opportunity to compare results between different countries and see what are the differences, the good practices and the opportunities to improve national residency programs. We encourage residents to respond to the invitation, when they receive it – fill in the online questionnaire to ensure that your voice is heard.
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Špela Vidovič
National Institute for Public Health, Slovenia