Other graphically visible differences were not significant: in both countries more mean Global Satisfaction of trainees compared to trainers in CON and AM, and in Switzerland better scores for AM than CON as rated by trainees as well as trainers.
a) A weakness of the study is the low return rate from trainees (41%) and trainers (42%) in Germany; and in Switzerland the advantage of higher return rates (trainees 76%, trainers 73%) is hampered by the small absolute numbers of respondents, so that selection and detection bias cannot be excluded.
At their current rate, trainees are again likely to fall short of the numbers that doctors who completed their training only 3 years previously under the previous training system achieved.
Up to a point, certainly: large institutions allow greater numbers of principal investigators (PIs) to collaborate, to share knowledge and costly equipment, and to attract first-rate trainees and prospective PIs.
So in some questions, there were more trainees rated by their trainers than trainees who filled the questionnaire what also affected the evaluation.
In ranking various ultrasound applications, all 15 trainees rated obstetrics most important.
On the first survey, trainees rated their agreement with statements describing improvements in communication and English language comprehension and literacy (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = no opinion, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree; Fig. 2).
Overall, on a scale of one to five, with five being extremely useful, 98% of trainees rated the course at 4 or 5 out of 5 at three months (n = 124) and 99% rated it the same at six months (n = 185).
The trainees rated each session based on its usefulness (5-point Likert scales); the rating scales were taken from our previous study [ 23].
