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

designed based on methodological rigor to identify differences within our EC, which was nec- essary to achieve quality assurance in our setting. We categorized the groups not only by the number of participants but also by considering the maturity levels of residents at each level and the complexity of the competencies to be met at different levels. Furthermore, lower numbers in the senior years that required us to combine the groups may also reflect the program’s evolution with the decreasing numbers in the senior years and increasing numbers in the junior years. In the future, changing perceptions of PGRs in pathol- ogy residency training programs over time in each group through a longitudinal study design to highlight the dynamics of interactions related to feedback scores may be assessed. Imple- menting interventions to address the problem of lower feedback scores in educational settings requires a comprehensive plan like training the trainer workshops for supervisors. It would be a short training session in which supervisors practiced giving feedback in a simulated setting that increased the quality of their feedback [28]. Thus, updating the departmental policies to address the identified needs would help increase feedback scores and how the feedback is per- ceived at the perceivers’ end. Conclusions Variations in EC scores were observed by years of training. Despite the observed positive scores for overall EC, variations by years of training reflect the need to identify the factors that

lead to these variations. Such an approach would help address the differences in EC scores by implementing targeted interventions. It is expected that feedback scores for pathology trainees can be improved by following the same approach. Supporting information S1 Dataset. Dataset used in this study. This is the data file for the data on EC scores in a pathology residency program at a tertiary care hospital. (CSV) S1 Table. Test of normality Kolmogorov-Smirnov. This is the table for the test of normality that was conducted to confirm if data was normally distributed. (DOCX) Acknowledgments The research study was initially conducted as a part of the master’s in health Professions Edu- cation (MHPE) Thesis at Shifa Tameer-e-Millat University. Author Contributions Conceptualization: Zafar Ali, Hashaam Bin Ghafoor, Muhammad Nasir Ayub Khan. Data curation: Zafar Ali, Saira Akhlaq. Formal analysis: Zafar Ali, Saira Akhlaq. Investigation: Zafar Ali. Methodology: Zafar Ali. Software: Zafar Ali, Saira Akhlaq. Supervision: Hashaam Bin Ghafoor, Muhammad Nasir Ayub Khan. Validation: Muslim Atiq. PLOS ONE Educational climate of a pathology residency program PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303534 May 23, 2024 8 / 10