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Objectives: To examine the importance of social networks and a 2-day faculty development workshop on adoption of an educational innovation–structured and constructive feedback–by clinical supervisors.

Methods: We administered a validated questionnaire to residents (n= 357) and clinical supervisors (n= 370) of different specialties (anesthesiology, radiology, pediatrics, and obstetrics/gynecology) in the Netherlands. Residents were asked to rate the clinical supervisors’ adoption of an educational innovation, the use of “structured and constructive feedback”. Clinical supervisors also performed a self-assessment of their adoption of the feedback innovation and rated their communication intensity with fellow clinical supervisors in their teams, resulting in a centrality score (the extent to which an individual is connected to colleagues in the network of his or her own clinical team) of the clinical supervisor. The effects of supervisor centrality and participation in a 2-day Teach-the-Teacher faculty development course on the degree of adoption of structured feedback were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling, adjusting for age, gender, and attitude towards educational innovation in general. Results: Although the Teach-the-Teacher course was significantly related to the supervisors’ selfassessment of innovation adoption (p=. 013), following such a course had no effect on the residents’ ratings of the supervisors’ adoption of structured feedback (p=. 272). In contrast, supervisor social network centrality was significantly related to adoption of the educational innovation, both in the residents’ assessment (p=. 023) and in the self-assessment (p=. 024 …