The Clinical Observership Program: A Valuable Experience for Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery Residents

Training during oral and maxillofacial surgery residency must include exposure to the scope of the specialty, but success in practice often requires particular experience and knowledge of complex oral regenerative procedures such as bone grafting and implant surgery, as well as practice management. Osteo Science Foundation created the Clinical Observership Program (COP) in 2017 to provide residents the opportunity to spend several weeks in an established oral and maxillofacial surgery practice to increase experience in these areas. The purpose of this study is to report the results of a survey of all resident participants in the COP from 2017 to 2021 in which participants were asked to rate their experience numerically.

This is an institutional retrospective case series completed via an electronic survey sent to all participants in the COP from 2017 to 2021. The primary outcome is the subjective assessment of the COP based on six questions in which the respondent was asked to rate the program on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being best). Categories included: 1) Did the program achieve expectations? 2) Was adequate time spent with the mentor? 3) Did you observe/participate in a variety of procedures? 4) Did the mentor provide additional didactic education? 5) Did you learn about practice management? and 6) How would you rate the overall experience? Descriptive statistics including mean score and standard deviation of each question were calculated, and no other covariates were analyzed.

All 55 participants in the COP from 2017 to 2021 were contacted and 55 complete responses were received. The overall mean score for all categories rated by the residents was 9.63, the mean rating for questions 1 to 6 were 9.55, 9.89, 9.21, 9.60, 9.69, and 9.86 respectively, and the range of scores was 7 to 10.

Overall, residents rated the COP experience highly. This survey indicates that the COP is a valuable supplemental experience in oral and maxillofacial surgery resident education.