STEPS

The Supportive Teaching Climates for Physician-Supervisors (STEPS) is a questionnaire aimed at providing insight into the quality of the teaching environment within a medical training program or teaching hospital. Internationally, the teaching environment is also referred to as the “teaching climate.”

In recent decades, there has been rightful attention given to the educational climate for medical residents (A(N)IOS). However, we believe that a good educational climate can only be guaranteed if there is also a supportive teaching climate. For a healthy training program, good working conditions are needed not only for the residents, but also for the supervisors. It’s time to start asking supervisors how they are doing.

The teaching climate is defined as the working environment in which medical specialists and supervisors work to train medical residents (A(N)IOS). This includes both the physical work environment and the prevailing standards, norms, and interprofessional relationships related to the training of medical specialists.

The D-RECT is an online questionnaire that measures the teaching climate, divided into 7 different domains, such as collaboration within a training group, contact with residents, and the balance between patient care and teaching responsibilities.

The questionnaire is filled out by all medical specialists within a training group who provide direct supervision to residents in daily practice or perform other training tasks. Completing the questionnaire is a one-time task and takes about 10-15 minutes.

Participation in the STEPS is anonymous for all medical specialists. The feedback report will only show the number of medical specialists, but no other identifiable data such as gender. These data are collected but will only be used for research purposes. The narrative feedback will be directly included in the final report.

The STEPS questionnaire is entirely web-based. Both completing the questionnaires and receiving the STEPS teaching climate report are automated. One STEPS report is generated per program. The system security complies with the highest safety standards.

Currently, the STEPS is still in the pilot phase. This means that participation is only possible within a research context. Once the pilot is complete, and the questionnaire is validated, STEPS will be available to everyone. Participants can then indicate on an individual basis whether they consent to the use of their (anonymized) data for further research.