Educational climate of a pathology residency program at a tertiary care hospital

supervision is one such sub-scale that is an essential component of any training program. The need to supervise pathology residents constantly by hospital teaching staff is always to provide patients with safe, effective, and better-quality care. PGRs score for supervision were high (average score 4.56 +/- 0.457) in a large percentage (94.4%) of study participants, which were comparatively better than the scores (3.75 +/- 1.49) among PGR residents from multiple spe- cialties [20] and during shift change (3.93 +/- 0.36) in a study conducted in the Netherlands that included residents from multiple specialty training programs during shift change [15]. Despite the prevalence of positive perceptions with varying degrees of magnitude in different populations, negative perceptions have also been observed in some studies, specifically about supervision (2.83 +/- 0.83) [4] and in residents of the Saudi emergency department in Riyadh (3.30 +/- 1.17) [23]. Therefore, identifying mechanisms that nurture differences in the magni- tude of positive scores and factors/strategies that lead to lower scores for supervision may help address the weaknesses within the educational systems and facilitate building on the strengths of a solid educational system by using it as a model. Coaching and assessment play a vital role that can never be overlooked. A positive percep- tion of coaching and assessment was prevalent (4.45 +/- 0.429) among study participants (100%), like positive perceptions (3.92 +/- 0.32) observed in medical residents in the Philip-

pines [25]. Despite the prevalence of positive scores in the current study and another study in the literature, there are still some studies that report lower scores (2.60 +/- 0.73, 3.24 +/- 0.35, and 3.08 +/- 1.17) in Saudi psychiatry residents, 45 multi-specialty residents in the Nether- lands, and Saudi Emergency residents correspondingly for perceptions about coaching and assessment [4, 15, 23]. Therefore, future studies may identify and compare the factors leading to these scores’ differences. Such an approach may help adopt mechanisms associated with higher scores for coaching and assessment. Feedback is a significant factor that enhances pathology residents’ learning process in three ways: it updates learners regarding their deficiency/progress, advises learners regarding observed training needs and resources available, assists them during learning, and encourages learners to engage in adequate learning activities. Despite the well-established understanding of the effectiveness of feedback in learning outcomes if communicated appropriately, feedback scores reportedly had been on the lower end [4, 15, 20]. A negative perception about feedback (3.19 +/- 0.458) in the current study re-affirms the previous findings about the low scores for feedback (2.00 +/- 0.85, 3.24 +/- 0.45 and 2.75 +/- 0.54), respectively [4, 15, 20]. The observed trend reflects the need for further concentration in the focused area of feedback to improve the patient-care capacity of the PGRs. Additionally, significant differences in means of EC scores

by years of training signal a need to identify differential pathways through which these differ- ences in means occur. For example, even in the low feedback scores range, lower scores were slightly higher for a single specialty but at multiple sites; perhaps, it could justify the slightly better feedback scores when considering the collective assessment of scores across all special- ties of medicine for PG training, even though scores were still lower, i.e., less than 4 (3.75 +/- 1.49) [20]. Similarly, feedback scores remain lower even when the primary purpose is not to measure the feedback scores but to measure feedback scores for assessing their effect. For example, the effect of LE on faculty’s teaching performance is assessed by residents’ perceptions (3.24 +/-0.45) [15]. When considering feedback scores for each item, it appears that the scores for the generalized feedback to residents are comparatively better (2.80+/-1.18) than the ones from a structured format (2.36+/-1.19) even though the feedback provided through the latter is more regular (2.39+/-1.22), despite the scores remaining consistently lower, i.e., below 4 in any of the three reported ways to provide feedback [23]. Thus, future research studies may uti- lize these findings and focus more on the needed forms of feedback, like structured rather than PLOS ONE Educational climate of a pathology residency program PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303534 May 23, 2024 5 / 10