How Do Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Residency Program Directors Feel About Their Graduating Residents' Level of Competence?
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R John Tannyhill1, Michael Baron2
1OMS Residency Program Director and Instructor, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Boston, MA.
Purpose:
The purpose of this study was to assess program directors' impressions of how competent graduating residents are in practicing the full scope of the specialty. The investigators hypothesized that program directors' impressions of their graduating residents' ability to practice the full scope of oral and maxillofacial surgery would fall within Laskin's suggested levels.
Materials And Methods:
The investigators implemented a cross-sectional study. A questionnaire was designed and a link to a Partners REDCap (Nashville, TN) survey was e-mailed to 101 oral-maxillofacial surgery program directors. The questionnaire included demographics, and program director's perceived level of preparedness, level of proficiency, comfort, and experience of their graduating residents (July 2018).
Results:
The response rate was 34.7%. Analyses included univariate statistics and a Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Significance was set at P < .05. There was no significant difference between orthognathic surgery and each discipline in the area of expertise category, and in some cases, a significantly higher perception of training in orthognathic surgery (P < .05). There was a significantly lower perception of training in oral medicine than each discipline in area of expertise (P < .05), suggesting a deficit in oral medicine training.
Conclusions:
Using our analyses, program directors believed that the chief residents training in orthognathic surgery was at the level of expertise. Furthermore, 97% of respondents considered orthognathic surgery an area of expertise, suggesting that training at that level is necessary. Our results show that program directors' impressions of their graduates' competence fall within the levels suggested by Laskin.
