As a medical professional, there is a commitment to ongoing learning required through professional development programs and industry registrations. Health professionals can enhance their clinical knowledge to support learning in several ways. Often Clinicians overlook insights into professional and interpersonal skills, yet evidence indicates health care improvements and overall patient satisfaction are supported by more advanced interpersonal skills.
CFEP Surveys’ Multi-Source Feedback (MSF) tool, sometimes referred to as 360 feedback, allows individual doctors to obtain feedback from peers, patients and industry associates to provide unique and varied views. These evaluations support doctors to gain more significant insights into their all-around performance.
Multi-source feedback to support professional development
CFEP Surveys partner with the medical colleges of Australian and New Zealand, and Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) supporting trainee doctors, to deliver multi-source feedback for their members. CFEP Surveys’ Multi-Source Feedback tools are internationally validated, robust and evidence-based. Continuing professional development (CPD) is available through a range of medical colleges and peak bodies, and aligns with the Medical Board of Australia’s incoming professional performance framework, covering reviewing performance and measuring domains.
Professional development and registration requirements
By undertaking MSF with CFEP Surveys, the following can be claimed:
Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP)
- 40 CPD Accredited Activities Points for Interpersonal Skills Questionnaire
- 40 CPD Accredited Activity Points for CFET
GPs need a minimum of 130 CPD points in the 2021 – 2022 triennium and must complete 2 Accredited Activities and 1 basic life support as a minimum requirement.
By completing a full MSF and the subsequent reflective exercises with CFEP, they will meet the Accredited Activity requirement and earn 80 of their 130 points (62%).
Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine (ACRRM)
DISQ (ACRRM specific ISQ) – 15 Outcome measurement PDP hours
CFET (Standard) – 18 Performance review PDP hours
ACRRM participants need to achieve 150 hours per triennium (50 hours per year) made up of the following; 25% from education activities, 25% from performance review, 25% from outcome measurement, remaining 25% from any of the others
By completing a full MSF and the subsequent reflective exercises with CFEP, they will achieve 40% of their Outcome measurement hours and 48% of their Performance review hours for the 2021 – 2022 triennium (22% of their total hours for the triennium).
Note: completion of the survey alone is not the full activity – GPs must complete the appropriate reflective exercise for each activity, which includes discussing their feedback with a colleague and implementing changes, hence the high CPD allocation.
Australiasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM)
ISQ – 15.5hours
CFET – 17 hours
Annual requirement of 50 hours with ≥ 12.5 hours in each of the 3 CPD Categories:
Educational Activities:
Measuring Outcomes (ISQ)
Reviewing Performance (CFET)
Please note: CFEP Surveys is the exclusive multi-source feedback tool provider for ACRRM and AHPRA.
As healthcare professionals, undertaking multi-source feedback can support in identifying personal opportunities for improvement to patient care and service delivery. Also, these insights can strengthen colleague relationships, enhance professionalism and support clinical education, learning and knowledge. Overall improvements can further benefit the medical practice, day procedure service, hospital and other health service types.
CFEP Surveys’ multi-source patient and colleague survey tool consists of the Interpersonal Skills Questionnaire (ISQ) and Colleague Feedback Evaluation Tool (CFET). In addition, each participating clinician must undertake a self-assessment to provide insight into how the doctor views themselves and, in comparison, to the feedback provided.
CFEP Surveys’ Patient and Colleague Survey Inclusions
CFEP Surveys' Interpersonal Skills Questionnaire (ISQ)
- Designed to give health professionals insights into their interpersonal skills from the patients’ point of view.
- Provided to patients’ post-consultation to gain feedback on their recent care experience and interactions with the individual clinician or surgeon.
- The survey contains 13 items which address behaviours such as the warmth of greeting, listening skills, clarity of explanations, respect for the patient, involving patients in decision-making and their confidence in the doctor’s ability.
- Unlimited personalised support from the CFEP Surveys Team to the individual doctor, reception or administration staff.
- A thorough analysis of a minimum of 30 questionnaires by the CFEP Surveys Team
- Delivery of a personalised report, highlighting key findings and benchmarking results.
CFEP Surveys' Colleague Feedback Evaluation Tool (CFET)
- Focuses on doctor professionalism and behaviours.
- Responses collected from peers and colleagues to provide perceptions around elements of working relationships, competence and professional development.
- Questionnaire distribution, response collection and collation, and report development are managed by CFEP Surveys via a secure portal. The participating doctor simply provides CFEP Surveys with a list of emails of colleagues to be contacted.
- CFEP Surveys requires a minimum of 12 colleague responses to ensure report validity.
- Findings are analysed and reviewed against the doctor’s self-assessment, colleague responses and national data sets.
- Delivery of an insightful, comprehensive and easy-to-interpret report linked to opportunities for personal improvement inclusive of actionable outputs.
- Fast, rigorous and reliable insights.
By evaluating the humanistic aspects of care through CFEP Surveys’ feedback questionnaires, health professionals can better understand aspects of their professionalism through focused evaluations. This includes their patient interactions, teamwork with colleagues, reliability and attention to personal and professional development.
Time-efficient, cost-effective and straightforward feedback process
The daily pressures clinicians face delivering exceptional healthcare makes it challenging to find an opportunity to reflect on how overall care is delivered. CFEP Surveys’ Multi-Source Feedback (MSF) tools make this process easy while ensuring valuable data is provided to support professional growth, development and performance.
As a valuable self-improvement tool, CFEP Surveys’ multi-source offerings include:
- Award of professional development points with medical colleges and peak bodies nationally
- Internationally validated*, robust and reliable questionnaires to support the collection of informative and useable insights
- Access to a secure online portal to ensure data collection and reporting is streamlined and in line with privacy and confidentiality requirements
- Personalised support to limit administration by clinicians and surgeons, allowing them more time to focus on their patients and delivery of care
- Comprehensive, insightful and easy-to-follow reports to support self-reflection while highlighting areas for improvement
- Comprehensive benchmarking data to compare performance to national averages
- Provision of a complementary reporting interpretive guide, backed by the ability to be personally stepped through the report with a member of the CFEP Surveys Team
CFEP Surveys' Multi-Source Feedback Process
Collection of CFEP Surveys’ Multi-Source Feedback is straightforward, providing clinicians with a comprehensive, easy-to-interpret and actionable report. The CFEP Surveys’ Multi-Source Feedback process involves the following steps:
Provision of the final report aims to support doctors with understanding and acting on the identified results to strengthen colleague relationships and the patient experience.
Select an application form to suit your requirements
MSF for all clinicians
MSF for ACRRM Members
MSF for RACP Members
MSF for MBA Assessment
* Campbell, J., Narayanan, A., Burford, B. and Greco, M. 2010. Validation of a multi-source feedback tool for use in general practice. Education for Primary Care. Vol.21
L Baker, M J Greco and A Narayanan. “Doctors using patient feedback to establish professional learning goals: Results from a communication skill development programme.” Chapter 22 in Pease, W.; Cooper, M. and Gururajan, R. 2010. Biomedical Knowledge Management: Infrastructures and Processes for E-Health Systems. IGI Publishing, Pennsylvania USA.
Narayanan, A. and Greco, M. 2007. What distinguishes general practitioners from consultants, according to colleagues? Journal of Healthcare Management and Marketing. Vol.1 No.1: 80-87