Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39320542›Full record

ArticleAdvances in health sciences education : theory and practice2025

Navigating discourses of feedback: developing a pattern system of feedback.

Catherine Patocka, Lara Cooke, Irene W Y Ma, Rachel H Ellaway

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Advances in health sciences education : theory and practice, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
5citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

5 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Learning in a contextually complex rural clinical placement.Advances in health sciences education : theory and practice · 2026
    Article
  2. Focusing on "Precision" in Precision Education.Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges · 2025
    Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Catherine PatockaDepartment of Emergency Medicine, University of Calgary Cumming School of Medicine, Calgary, Canada. catherine.patocka@ucalgary.ca.ORCID 0000-0003-4683-5655
Lara CookeDepartment of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Calgary Cumming School of Medicine, Calgary, Canada.ORCID 0000-0001-5417-571X
Irene W Y MaDepartment of Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary Cumming School of Medicine, Calgary, Canada.ORCID 0000-0002-7580-0171
Rachel H EllawayDepartment of Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary Cumming School of Medicine, Calgary, Canada.ORCID 0000-0002-3759-6624

Funding

CIHR 434817Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada,Canada 20/MAU-01
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Although feedback is often presented as if it were a well-understood concept in health professions education, in practice it can mean many things. For some, feedback is a conversation about defining and improving performance, while for others it is the information generated by assessments and tools. Indeed, feedback has variously been defined as a process, as data, as a conversation, and as a reflective exercise. As a result, for a concept so central to what educators do, 'feedback' is ambiguous and has multiple meanings. Pattern theory affords opportunities to examine what scholars and practitioners mean when they use the term 'feedback'. Elaborating feedback as a pattern system can connect otherwise disjointed discourses of feedback. In this paper, the authors describe the development of a pattern system of feedback in medical education. Arksey & O'Malley's 5-stages of scoping reviews were adapted to enact a 6-step pattern system development methodology that included (1) Identifying the research question and scope of inquiry; (2) elaborating a strategy for pattern identification; (3) study selection; (4) abductive pattern representation development; (5) pattern system testing; and (6) summarizing and reporting the results. A pattern system of feedback was developed based on review of 218 full text articles and testing against an additional 2833 citations. This pattern system is made up of 36 pattern representations organized under 6 domains: feedback referent, feedback intentions, feedback information, feedback processing, feedback response, and feedback meta. The pattern system was applied to two models of feedback to demonstrate its utility as a lens through which to analyze various instances of feedback and to foreshadow its potential broader applicability as a tool to facilitate knowledge synthesis in the feedback problem space.

Indexed as

Education, MedicalFeedbackFormative FeedbackHumansConceptualizationFeedbackPattern systemPattern theory

Identifiers

PMID39320542
PMCPMC12119738

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.