The Philadelphia surgery conference: a value analysis of a hands-on surgical skill-building event

Limited opportunities exist to practice technical skills and to be exposed to various surgical specialties during preclinical medical education.

To assess the value of workshop-based educational opportunities to medical students during preclinical training.

One hundred and 75 medical and physician assistant students from 10 medical schools attended the 2019 Philadelphia Surgery Conference. All students received STOP THE BLEED® bleeding control training and participated in four workshops, chosen from a list of 23, that demonstrated a variety of surgical skills. Data collection was accomplished using both a pre- and postconference survey to assess changes in confidence of personal capabilities, knowledge base, and opinions regarding preclinical medical training.

Preconference survey results indicated low baseline confidence in personal surgical skills (mean [SD], 1.9 [1.0], on a Likert scale of 1-5), and knowledge of various surgical specialties (2.7 [1.0]). Students highly valued skill-building experiences (mean [SD], 4.2 [1.1]) and face-to-face interactions with resident and attending physicians (4.4 [0.9]). Postconference survey analysis demonstrated increased confidence in surgical ability by 52.6% (mean [SD], 2.9 [1.0]; p<0.001) and knowledge base by 34.6% (3.5 [0.8]; p<0.001). Value scores increased for both preclinical surgical skill-building opportunities (mean [SD], 4.4 [0.9]; p=0.014) and interactions with resident and attending physicians (4.7 [0.6]; p=0.002).

The Philadelphia Surgery Conference provided a highly valuable experience to participating students, increasing confidence in personal knowledge base and surgical skills while facilitating a collaboration between students and resident and attending physicians from various surgical specialties.