Advocacy inquiry and circular questioning to maintain psychological safety in training, feedback, and conversations with residents

Abstract

Training of emergency physicians through an emergency medicine residency program takes 5 years, that is, 3 years in junior residency and 2 years in senior residency. Throughout this period, residents will be exposed to a variety of educational methodologies and meet a spectrum of faculty, supervisors, and teachers, who will have different personalities, styles, and approaches to teaching and nurturing them. It is important to ensure the maintenance of psychological safety for these residents throughout their training journey and into the future years of practice s an emergency physician. Communications, interactions (which involve questioning), and presentations will be an important part of this training program. This article looks at two modes of questioning: advocacy inquiry and circular questioning, which can be applied as appropriate. These two methods are examples in which faculty may consider adopting in their many interactions, follow-up, feedback, tutorials, facilitation, partnerships, and counseling sessions with residents. These two techniques offer options to maintain psychological safety, which can facilitate learners sharing and opening up. It can be included in the faculty's armamentarium of questioning techniques and applied where applicable.