Surgical knowledge base augmentation by medical rotations: does it happen?

A study of 4 groups of fifth year medical students taking Surgery during the 4 terms of 1989 at the University of Queensland was undertaken to determine whether there was assimilation of factual material relevant to the surgical knowledge base from the other specialty rotations done during the same year of the course. The records of multiple choice question (MCQ) examination results for the 210 students were retrieved and reviewed. The performance of the same students during their fourth-year rotation in Surgery was checked to make sure that the 4 groups did not already display unusual surgical aptitude or incompetence. The questions were categorized in order to ascertain that the content of all the examinations was similar. The results of students doing Surgery during the first of the 4 terms in 1989 were compared with subsequent groups. The difference between the groups was that those in the first term had not had the benefit of fifth year rotations through Internal Medicine, Psychiatry, General Practice and electives. Subsequent groups had increasing experience in the other specialties. The fourth and final group in the year had undertaken all four of the other rotations before doing Surgery. Significant improvement was found in the performance of each of the subsequent groups of students compared with the first-term group. This implies that there is an escalating accural of factual knowledge related to surgery from the fifth-year courses in Internal Medicine, Child Health and Psychiatry.