D-RECT

The learning climate describes residents’ perceptions of the formal and informal aspects of education, including perceptions of the overall atmosphere as well as policies, practices, and procedures within the teaching hospital. A safe and supportive learning climate is of great importance for the development of residents. We know, from research, that it can have a positive effect on motivation, confidence, and academic achievements of learners.

D-RECT questionnaire measures the learning climate using 35 items grouped into 9 learning domains, such as patient handover, collaboration between educators and cooperation of residents themselves. The D-RECT is used in many counties such as Columbia, Japan and the Philippines and the questionnaire is available in several languages. The questionnaire is developed by Klarke Boor and colleagues in 2011, and revised and validated by Silkens, Smirnova and colleagues (see: Silkens et al., 2016)

The questionnaire is filled out by all residents in one residency program (one questionnaire per resident).

Filling out the D-RECT questionnaire is anonymous for the residents. The feedback report displays only the number of residents who have completed the evaluation, but not the year of training or gender of the resident. This information is only used for research purposes. A single feedback report is generated per residency program.

The D-RECT questionnaire is administered through a web-based system. Filling out the questionnaires as well as receiving of the D-RECT feedback report is completely automatic. The security of the system meets the highest safety standards.

The Professional Performance research group, studies the learning climate already for years.  Two dissertations about this topic have been published, namely from dr. Milou Silkens (click here for her dissertation) and dr. Alina Smirnova (click here for her dissertation). PhD candidate Iris Jansen is currently studying the learning climate.