MSF

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You must undertake Multi-Source Feedback (MSF) once every five years as part of the revalidation process, and your feedback should include a selection of personnel in an OOH service where you work regularly.

This might include:

• Medical colleagues
• Receptionists
• Nurses
• Paramedics
• Drivers
• Centre manager

It is helpful and far more effective for the OOH service to arrange this as a project to cover all its clinical employees. The key principles are:

• The respondents should be asked to participate by a third party
• An explicit statement that they are NOT asked to reveal their identities, but that any named feedback would be helpful
• That the purpose of the exercise is to help you to identify your strengths and also areas in which you might develop, in a constructive and helpful way
• The replies are collated by a third party who provides the results to your appraiser in confidence to allow him/her to feed them back to you and to reflect on them

A free MSF tool is available through SOAR for doctors working in Scotland. For more details please check out the section in the main toolkit.

You can use other tools but check with your Responsible Officer first to ensure the chosen tool is acceptable for revalidation purposes.

Considering the feedback received

It is important to highlight that receiving feedback is best done with the help of a trained facilitator. Not all feedback may be positive and you need to be able to evaluate what it means without emotional overlay.

Unfortunately when there is negative feedback people often feel defensive and then act inappropriately, because the information has not been reflected on in context. Is there evidence that the feedback is true? How do other doctors score on this item? Is the adverse feedback a feature of not being well known to the person giving it?

If you work in an organisation only occasionally you may score less well because you are less well known. Other factors which can impinge include difficulties such as low staffing levels or working in a small organisation where there are few people to provide feedback. As stated, if you intend to undertake an MSF survey we strongly advise discussing this with your appraiser in advance.

This page was last updated on: 07/11/2024