National ABSITE Preparation Practices: A Survey of General Surgery Residency Program Directors

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Surgical Training
• In-Training Examinations

Background:

• The American Board of Surgery In-Training Examination (ABSITE) is intended as a low-stakes assessment for general surgery residents.
• However, ABSITE scores are increasingly used for high-stakes decisions like resident promotion, remediation, and fellowship selection.
• Current national practices and optimal preparation strategies for ABSITE are not well-defined.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify current general surgery residency programs' strategies for ABSITE preparation.
• To analyze the relationship between preparation methods and ABSITE performance.

Main Methods:

• An electronic survey was distributed to US general surgery program directors and coordinators.
• The survey collected data on program-specific ABSITE educational practices and self-reported ABSITE scores.
• Descriptive statistics and Mann-Whitney testing were used for analysis.

Main Results:

• A 24% response rate was achieved from 66 general surgery residency programs.
• The average ABSITE percentile score was 52.8%, with no significant differences based on program affiliation or size.
• Common preparation resources included SCORE (89.3%) and Q-banks (50%).
• A year-long curriculum correlated positively with higher ABSITE scores (53.9% vs. 48.5%, p <0.01).
• Time-limited curricula correlated with lower scores (51.3% vs. 56.1%, p <0.01).

Conclusions:

• General surgery programs employ diverse ABSITE preparation strategies.
• Despite the high-stakes use of ABSITE scores, many programs consider them low priority.
• A year-long curriculum is the only strategy associated with improved ABSITE performance, highlighting the benefit of consistent study and spaced repetition.