The Educational Benefits of Plastic Surgery Rotations for Off-Service Residents

With increasing specialization among surgical divisions, a well-rounded education during a surgical residency is often accomplished by rotating among different subspecialties. Inclusion of specific rotations in the resident curriculum can be considered as a cost-benefit calculation balancing the value of exposure to a subspecialty versus the opportunity cost of potential learning from another rotation. We find that often these decisions are based on anecdotal feedback. Our goal is to supplement these reports with a quantifiable metric of learning achieved on the plastic surgery rotation. Our hypothesis in this prospective study was that residents would demonstrate improved performance on a post-rotation test after their 1-month rotation on plastic surgery compared to the pre-rotation test.

A question bank was developed to reflect institutional curriculum objectives and clinical scenarios commonly seen on the service. The questions were developed, validated and vetted in collaboration with medical educators and attending plastic surgeons yielding 20 questions available for use. Postgraduate year 1 residents were given a 10-question test before and after their plastic surgery rotation. A one-tailed paired t-test was used to assess improvement between the pre-rotation test and the post-rotation test.

A total of 378 tests were administered with 228 (60%) pre- and post-rotation tests completed meeting inclusion criteria. Average percentage of correct answers for the pre-rotation test was 29% and 88% for the post-rotation test showing a differential improvement of 58% (p < 0.001).

Surgical trainee time is a limited commodity. Each clinical rotation needs proven consistent benefit for the trainees. We developed a questionnaire that documents the improvement in clinical knowledge after a one-month rotation on plastic surgery relative to before. The test results were consistent even when comparing trainees who did the rotation early versus late in the PGY-1 year. Clinical exposure reinforces and solidifies specialty learning.