A Nationwide Survey Study on Medical Student Experience in Acute Care Surgery

There is little known about medical student education in acute care surgery (ACS)-how much and what type of exposure students receive in the specialty. The aim of this study was to investigate the current status of ACS education provided to students in U.S. medical schools.

We created an online survey tool covering the surgical clerkship and ACS curriculum and distributed this survey to the official email list of the Association for Surgical Education Committee on Clerkship Directors.

A total of 57 of 294 (19.4%) responses were received. All respondents reported that at least some of their major teaching hospitals are affiliated with an ACS service and have a level 1 or 2 trauma center. Although almost two-thirds (61.8%) of respondents believe that medical students should have formal ACS education in the form of a clinical rotation, an ACS rotation is mandatory at only 16.4% of programs and is optional at 69.1% of programs as part of the surgical clerkship curriculum. The duration of ACS rotations ranges from 1 to 6 wk, and half of programs require students to take overnight call (most often 1-2 nights/wk). The most common pathologies that students see on ACS include appendicitis, biliary disease and cholecystitis, intestinal obstruction, and trauma.

Medical students across the nation have varying exposure to ACS during their clinical training. With the continued growth of the ACS specialty, further study is warranted to examine the impact of undergraduate ACS education on student career planning.