Subthemes identified within the theme of the negative effects of feedback on self-worth
| Forms of negative feedback on the self | Illustrative quotes | Forms of negative feedback effecting learning | Illustrative examples |
| Loss of interest | ‘It doesn’t have the effect on me, it doesn’t make we want to prove someone wrong, it doesn’t make me want to reach further, what it makes me want to do, if I am criticised like that with those sorts of comments in the procedure that I am doing, it makes me want to pass the operation back to the trainer. It makes me almost want to say, “you finish it. I don’t want to stand here and be spoken to like that. You finish it and I will assist”’. (ID 1) | Decrease in performance | ‘You know you can’t ask questions in that kind of environment you, you just, you know you’re over-analysing every single, the things that you do naturally you know in theatre because you’ve been doing them for a long time you then are second guessing yourself, you’re slower, you’re, you know you are more shaky you’ve not, you just don’t perform to the same kind of standard’. (ID 4) |
| Trainee would rather not be in theatre | ‘Oh yeah, the middle grade who got the short straw would regularly kind of try and say that maybe we should swap…it was just an excuse to not to have to put up with this guy’. (ID 11) | Questioning career choice | ‘I felt undermined and I felt frustrated and I felt upset and maybe a bit, a bit worried about my future in surgery because I thought maybe I can’t, maybe I can’t operate’. (ID 2) |
| Lack of self-worth | ‘it was possibly one of the most stressful three hours of my life…he has very different ways of doing the same operation, so you can’t anticipate what their little nuances are going to be but it was negative in the way that it felt like “oh my gosh I’m not doing anything right” and you get to the point where you’re almost ready to say “you know what you just take the operation, I obviously can’t do anything right”’. (ID 7) | Loss of learning experience | ‘I was very much was like passed to the second assistant so you can’t really see anything and you’re left holding a sucker and every now and again being asked to do something, but generally speaking you’re sort of ignored’. (ID 7) |
| Devalues trainee/trainer relationship | ‘Again, it’s a tricky one because I’ve kind of formed my own opinion towards that trainer and had informal support from my colleagues like not to take them very seriously but it definitely decreases your respect towards that trainer….I find that quite demoralising and quite often offensive’. (ID5) |
ID, identification.