Role of surgical residents in undergraduate surgical education

OBJECTIVES: TO identify the role and impact of surgical residents on the va rious activities of a senior (4th year) surgical clerkship, and to explore students' perceptions of differences between the teaching behaviours of att ending physicians and residents. DESIGN: A survey by questionnaire. SETTING: McGill University, Montreal. METHOD: A 67-item questionnaire was administered to fourth-year medical stu dents at the end of their 8 Reek surgical clerkship. Analysis of the data w as performed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, Dunn's multiple compariso n test and mean average. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Overall satisfaction with the clerkship, teaching be haviours and teaching of clinical skills and basic principles. RESULTS: Overall satisfaction with the clerkship was 6.31 out of 10. Surgic al residents were perceived as being significantly more active than the att ending staff in 14 out of 15 teaching behaviours. They were also seen as im portant in teaching certain clinical skills such as suturing, assisting in the operating room and managing emergency situations. They also contributed significantly to teaching the basic principles of surgery such as infectio ns, surgical bleeding and fluid and electrolytes. On a 10-point scale, stud ents felt that more learning was achieved by independent reading, tutorials and residents' teaching than by other teaching modalities, including atten ding physicians' and nurses' teaching. CONCLUSIONS: Medical students perceive surgical residents as being signific antly more active in their education process than the attending staff. Resi dents appear to be responsible for teaching various technical and patient m anagement skills necessary for patient care: Along with independent reading and tutorials, resident teaching contributes a significant portion of the medical student's acquisition of knowledge and appears to contribute to the students' choice of surgery as a career.