Table 6.

Factors facilitating/inhibiting learning through supervised learning events/workplace-based assessments

Levels	Definition	Illustrative quotes
Individual	Trainee/trainer characteristics including the presence (facilitator) or absence (inhibitor) of: enthusiasm, motivation, and engagement; understanding of SLE/WPBAs; teaching/learning competence; self-reflection and self-awareness; organisational skills and confidence.	“but it seems to be sort of confusing the seniors as well because they're not too sure what's required of us… they're not too sure what the requirements are and to be honest when we first started it didn't seem like the academic office was too sure of the requirements either… so no one had a clue sort of how many we all needed…” (Female F2, site 1)
Interpersonal	Trainee-trainer relationship characterised by presence (facilitator) or absence (inhibitor) of: knowledge of the other person and continuity of relationship; mutual respect; like, warmth, and trust; an identification with the ‘other’ and a sense of connectedness; connection to the ‘team’ with shared goals.	“In a way it's needed really because of the way postgraduate medical training has been condensed and continuity of training has disappeared so you don't get the same mentorship and the same apprenticeship that you used to be because you're working with a number of different consultants depending on which day of the week it is and I think that's one of the things that is difficult actually for the trainers is that they may not see a lot of the trainees to get the background sense of how a trainee actually is so that they can then provide meaningful input related to a specific case…” (Male Trainer, site 1)
Cultural	Organisational characteristics including presence (facilitator) or absence (inhibitor) of: safe learning and assessment culture; protected time for supervised practice including observation and feedback; rotations with adequate durations; team-orientation with availability of registrar, consultant and non-medical trainers (eg, nurses); relevant tools for each specialty.	“I think the SLEs were a little bit easier [on my second rotation] because you got regs [registrars] to do it… the environment is very amenable to SLEs because you saw the same regs again and again and it's easy to follow-up versus another environment that's less so, let's say if you're working in orthopaedics not so much because their rotas don't exactly facilitate for seeing people on a regular basis and it's a different, separate teams and very much the FY1 more on the wards and that's why pretty much so it really is environment depended” (Male trainee, site 1)
Technological	Technological characteristics including presence (facilitator) or absence (inhibitor) of hardware (eg, computers, smartphones) and software (eg, online tools, Internet).	Int: How quickly do you complete their form, their e-Portfolio? MT: I tend to do them online at the time… primarily because I'm never more than two feet away from my iPad and so it's easy to um get them to log in either on a terminal and send me a link (Male Trainer, site 3)