A model for tracking student experiences on surgical clerkships

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Surgical Training
• Clinical Practice

Background:

• Surgical clerkships are crucial for medical students' foundational surgical knowledge and clinical skills development.
• Variations in hospital settings (university, community, public) may influence the nature and extent of student learning experiences.
• Standardizing the assessment of surgical clerkship experiences is essential for ensuring comprehensive medical education.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify and characterize the range and nature of surgical clerkship experiences.
• To compare learning opportunities across university, community, and public hospital settings.
• To evaluate the utility of tracking student experiences for educational assessment.

Main Methods:

• Developed an instrument to track learning experiences, patient demographics, and surgical content during clerkships.
• Twenty-three medical students utilized the instrument to record their 8-week surgical clerkship activities.
• Analyzed recorded data to determine task frequency, learning environment, surgical topic exposure, and patient characteristics.

Main Results:

• Students performed an average of 245 surgical tasks, observing 25% and performing 70%.
• Most learning occurred on patient floors (66%) and in operating rooms (23%), with varied patient loads across hospital types.
• Experiences included broad surgical topics (71% general surgery), patient exposure (39%), and operative participation (36%).

Conclusions:

• Despite setting-specific variations, core clinical and didactic components of surgical clerkships can ensure balanced exposure to surgical topics and skills.
• Tracking surgical clerkship experiences provides valuable insights into students' didactic, clinical, and operative learning.
• Standardized tracking methods can inform curriculum development and enhance the quality of surgical education.