Beyond tools: relational trust as the foundation for workplace-based learning

Abstract

Workplace-based assessment (WBA) is intended to support learning through authentic clinical experience, feedback conversations, and coaching embedded in everyday practice.1 Yet in Hong Kong's postgraduate training system, it is often experienced differently as there is a burdensome documentation requirement-episodic, procedural, and disconnected from meaningful developmental dialogue.2,3 This gap reflects underinvestment in human foundations, rather than failures of the tools themselves.To fulfil its educational promise, WBA must be reclaimed not primarily as a mechanism for recording performance, but as a structured learning process that depends on support, dialogue, and relational trust.