Journal of surgical education
-
Review Comparative Study
Can Simulated Team Tasks be Used to Improve Nontechnical Skills in the Operating Room?
The purpose of this study was to understand the effect of a team-based surgical skills intervention on the technical and nontechnical skills of surgery residents. ⋯ Nontechnical skills positively correlate with the technical performance of a surgeon. Simple, easily designed tasks can be used to improve NOTSS in the OR. These team tasks and development of curricula based on them can be used to explicitly address one of the most important components of ACGME core competencies for surgical residents, namely interpersonal skills and communication.
-
Review Comparative Study
Repaying in Kind: Examination of the Reciprocity Effect in Faculty and Resident Evaluations.
Although the reciprocity hypothesis (that trainees have a tendency to modify evaluations based on the grades they receive from instructors) has been documented in other fields, very little work has examined this phenomenon in the surgical residency environment. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which lenient-grading faculty receive higher evaluations from surgery residents. ⋯ Results suggest that there is a reciprocity effect in the faculty and resident evaluation process.
-
Unprofessional behavior is common among surgical residents and faculty surgeons on Facebook. Usage of social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter is growing at exponential rates, so it is imperative that surgery program directors (PDs) focus on professionalism within social media, and develop guidelines for their trainees and surgical colleagues. Our study focuses on the surgery PDs current approach to online professionalism within surgical education. ⋯ Use of social media is high among PDs, and they often view the online behavior of residency applicants, surgical residents, and faculty surgeons. Within surgical education, there needs to be an increased focus on institutional policies and standardized curricula to help educate physicians on social media and online professionalism.
-
Review Multicenter Study Comparative Study
The Feasibility of Real-Time Intraoperative Performance Assessment With SIMPL (System for Improving and Measuring Procedural Learning): Early Experience From a Multi-institutional Trial.
Intraoperative performance assessment of residents is of growing interest to trainees, faculty, and accreditors. Current approaches to collect such assessments are limited by low participation rates and long delays between procedure and evaluation. We deployed an innovative, smartphone-based tool, SIMPL (System for Improving and Measuring Procedural Learning), to make real-time intraoperative performance assessment feasible for every case in which surgical trainees participate, and hypothesized that SIMPL could be feasibly integrated into surgical training programs. ⋯ SIMPL can be feasibly integrated into surgical training programs to enhance the frequency and timeliness of intraoperative performance assessment. We believe SIMPL could help facilitate a national competency-based surgical training system, although local and systemic challenges still need to be addressed.
-
Review Comparative Study
The Interventional Arm of the Flexibility In Duty-Hour Requirements for Surgical Trainees Trial: First-Year Data Show Superior Quality In-Training Initiative Outcomes.
With the implementation of strict 80-hour work week in general surgery training, serious questions have been raised concerning the quality of surgical education and the ability of newly trained general surgeons to independently operate. Programs that were randomized to the interventional arm of the Flexibility In duty-hour Requirements for Surgical Trainees (FIRST) Trial were able to decrease transitions and allow for better continuity by virtue of less constraints on duty-hour rules. Using National Surgical Quality Improvement Program Quality In-Training Initiative data along with duty-hour violations compared with old rules, it was hypothesized that quality of care would be improved and outcomes would be equivalent or better than the traditional duty-hour rules. It was also hypothesized that resident perception of compliance with duty hour would not change with implementation of new regulations based on FIRST trial. ⋯ Residents with flexible work hours on the interventional arm of the FIRST trial at our institution took care of a significantly sicker cohort of patients as compared with the national dataset with equivalent outcomes. Flexible duty-hour policy under the FIRST trial has enabled the residents to have fewer work-hour violations while improving continuity of care to the patients. Additionally, the overall perception of resident compliance with the duty-hour requirements was improved.