Characteristics of Surgical Coaching Interventions: A Systematic Review

Coaching is increasingly utilized as an educational intervention for performance improvement in surgeons and surgical trainees. Surgical coaching has been utilized across a broad range of specialties, experience levels and outcomes with generally positive results. Coaching interventions are often developed by individual institutions for their own context which has resulted in a heterogenous group of interventions. This review aims to investigate surgical coaching interventions to identify common characteristics that comprise an effective coaching intervention.

A systematic review was conducted to identify studies investigating surgical coaching interventions up to July 2024. Studies were limited to English language peer-reviewed studies that adequately described the characteristics and outcomes of the surgical coaching intervention. Data on the primary and secondary outcomes, study objective and participants' demographics were also recorded.

The search across 4 electronic databases generated 9538 citations. Following screening and review of full text articles 28 studies were included in the review. Surgical coaching interventions were carried out in 8 separate countries with the majority (22/28) in North America. Studies involved between 3 and 107 participants. Coaching interventions were markedly heterogenous, and specific details of the methods used were inconsistently documented. Study length ranged from 1 (9/28) to 14 (1/28) sessions and duration from less than 15 minutes (1/29) to greater than 3 hours (3/28). The most common themes were goal setting (10/28), feedback (7/28) and reflection (7/28). Outcomes were generally positive with 47 of 55 identified outcomes demonstrating benefit from surgical coaching. There were 3 key domains and 13 sub-domains that comprised the majority of coaching interventions.

Surgical coaching has been shown to be a promising intervention that requires more rigorous research to develop the field. We have identified 3 key domains which can be utilized to analyses and develop coaching interventions in the future.