PHEEM 'downunder'.

BACKGROUND

The use of the Postgraduate Hospital Education Environment Measure (PHEEM) has been previously described in this journal.

AIMS

We established a nine-hospital project to test the acceptability of the PHEEM in Australia.

METHOD

We adapted the language of some items in the PHEEM in order to localize the terminology (such as 'beeped'/'paged') and adjusted the demographics section to facilitate tracking of individual hospitals in the project.

RESULTS

Over two years, more than 400 PHEEMs were returned. Eight of the nine hospitals have an educational environment that is 'more positive than negative but with room for improvement'. One has an 'excellent' environment. None are in the two lowest scoring categories. The lowest scoring items in the collaborative project related to 'feedback', 'information and support', 'infrastructure' and 'interruptions'. The highest scoring items related to 'teachers', 'personal security' and 'working together'.

CONCLUSION

The PHEEM is valuable for systematically collecting information about the educational environment of hospitals. It has brought particular attention to problems associated with protected training time for first year trainees, inappropriate paging and lack of feedback.