Built by a resident, for residency programs
Talk first.
Forms second.
Debrief exists because the best feedback in medical training happens in a conversation, not in a form. Preceptors and residents talk after almost every encounter. That’s where the real learning happens. The form comes after, and it often doesn’t come at all.
The story
Why this exists.
Debrief was built by a resident in British Columbia, watching the same thing happen on every rotation: a preceptor gives rich, specific, immediately useful verbal feedback right after a case, and what does get written down rarely captures it.
What gets written down is the form: generic boxes, filled in days later from memory, with whichever trainee happened to come to mind that week. The actual feedback, the part that would have changed how the trainee practices tomorrow, lives in the hallway and then disappears.
That gap between what’s said and what’s documented is the whole reason this product exists. Every design decision comes back to it: we don’t ask clinicians to do more typing, we don’t ask residents to chase preceptors for paperwork, and we don’t pretend a rating scale captures anything that matters. We just preserve the conversation, scrub what shouldn’t be there, and give the resident a draft they can review before it counts.
Currently piloting with UBC Family Medicine.
We’re in an active pilot with the University of British Columbia Family Medicine program. Feedback from residents and preceptors in that cohort shapes every release.
Mission
Preserve the feedback that already happens.
Our mission is to preserve the high-quality verbal feedback that already happens in clinical training, and turn it into a formal record without making clinicians fill out one more form. We capture the conversation, remove any patient identifiers that might have slipped in, and map what was said to the competency framework your program uses. The resident reviews everything before it becomes official. No automation without oversight.
What we believe
Four things we keep coming back to.
Preceptors should talk, not type.
Clinicians already give high-quality verbal feedback. The problem isn’t quality; it’s that nothing captures it. A busy preceptor should not have to choose between a good conversation and a completed form.
Residents deserve specific feedback.
Generic 5-point ratings aren’t feedback. What residents need is what was actually said: specific observations, concrete suggestions, clear strengths. Verbal feedback already contains all of that. We preserve it.
Assessment data should reflect what was actually said.
Competency ratings filled in from memory, days after an encounter, reflect the form, not the case. Data drawn directly from the conversation is more accurate, more specific, and more useful for the resident and the program.
Canadian training data stays in Canada.
We store and process everything on Canadian infrastructure. This wasn’t a feature added at the end; it’s how the system was designed from day one.
Talk to us.
If you’re running a residency program, or a resident who has opinions about assessment, we want to hear from you.
hello@debriefmd.ca