Educational environment in intensive care medicine--use of Postgraduate Hospital Educational Environment Measure (PHEEM).
BACKGROUND
The educational climate is an important measure within medical education. This is because there are still accounts of poor teaching, humiliation, bullying and harassment of doctors in training. Deaneries and schools must be able to demonstrate to the Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board that trainees are working and learning in a good environment.


METHODS
This study used the Postgraduate Hospital Educational Environment Measure (PHEEM) to measure the educational climate in nine intensive care training schemes within hospitals in England and Scotland. 134 trainees replied out of 190 (71% response). Neither the identities of the nine units nor the trainees were known to the researchers.


RESULTS
The results showed that there was a good overall educational climate in the intensive care units studied, with no racism or sexism, and trainees were happy with their teaching, their support and the work they did. The junior trainees (house officers and senior house officers) perceived a significantly better climate than did the senior trainees (specialist registrars). There were also significant differences in scores for the nine different intensive care units.


CONCLUSIONS
PHEEM has proved to be a reliable and consistent tool to assess educational climate with an overall Cronbach's alpha of 0.921.
Clapham
Michael
M
West Midlands Deanery, United Kingdom. mike.clapham@uhb.nhs.uk
Wall
David
D
Batchelor
Anna
A
D000328:Adult; D003422:Critical Care; D004503:Education, Medical, Graduate / Q000592:standards*; D004521:Educational Measurement; D004739:England; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007396:Internship and Residency / Q000592:standards*; D008297:Male; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012606:Scotland; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires