Perception of Quiet Students in Emergency Medicine: An Exploration of Narratives in the Standardized Letter of Evaluation

Introduction: The Standardized Letter of Evaluation (SLOE) is designed to assist emergency medicine (EM) residency programs in differentiating applicants and in selecting those to interview. The SLOE narrative component summarizes the student ’s clinical skills as well as their non-cognitive attributes. The purpose of this qualitative investigation was to explore how students described in the SLOE as quiet are perceived by faculty and to better understand how this may impact their residency candidacy.Methods: This retrospective cohort study included all SLOEs submitted to one EM residency program during one application cycle. We analyzed sentences in the SLOE narrative describing students as “quiet,”“shy,” and/or “reserved.” Using grounded theory, thematic content analysis with a constructivist approach, we identified five mutually exclusive themes that best characterized the usage of these target words.Results:...
Source: Western Journal of Emergency Medicine - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Source Type: research