Surgeons as medical school educators: An untapped resource

Abstract

Despite extensive experience teaching residents, surgeons are an untapped resource for educating medical students. We hypothesized that by involving surgeons as teachers earlier in the medical school curriculum, medical students' interest in surgery will increase and their opinions of surgeons will improve. Five programs designed to involve surgeons as educators in the medical school curriculum were implemented. The first program, started in 2008, introduced surgical faculty into the first-year medical student anatomy dissection laboratories. Other programs initiated in 2008 included: Surgical Clinical Correlates in Anatomy, which involved faculty teaching through cadaver surgery; Clinical Pathologic Conferences in Anatomy, a surgeon-led conference based on clinical cases; and a women's faculty-student mentorship program. Table Rounds, a surgeon-led anatomy review that used clinical scenarios to quiz students was begun in 2009. All five programs were successfully integrated into the medical school curriculum. While student opinion of surgeons as educators improved, there were no significant changes in student interest in surgery as a career nor change in performance on written examinations over the Anatomy content covered by the surgeons. Surgical faculty and trainees can be integrated into the medical school curriculum. Involving surgeons as educators earlier in the medical school curriculum may have longer term effects than could be observed in this study. At a minimum, the experience improved student opinion of surgeons as educators.

Teaching surgical exposures to undergraduate medical students: an integration concept for anatomical and surgical education

“…Declining numbers of applications in surgery may be related to the decreasing emphasis of anatomy in the preclinical curriculum [10]. Though causation between decreasing anatomy contact hours and declining applicant numbers to surgery is most hypothetical, the majority of the teachers believe that surgery should play a greater role in undergraduate medical education [3,4,20,21,24,46,54] and the majority of the students would prefer to revisit dissection in a clinical context [10,11,37]. The survey data on our surgical exposures workshop confirm this standpoint.…”

“…Also, the peer concept proved to be highly efficient in our workshop ( Fig. 3; Table 3) and elsewhere [4,20,21,56,57].…”

“…Vice versa, concepts implementing practical medical skills in the preclinical curriculum may help to strengthen the professional identity of surgeons and anatomists, combining academic surgery and with clinically relevant anatomy [4,20,21,24]. Taking into account this complex conviction especially in the German speaking countries, we established a workshop on surgical exposures in orthopedic and trauma surgery in the preclinical curriculum.…”

“…Innovative teaching concepts that integrate surgically relevant anatomy and surgical dexterity might therefore help to enhance students' interest in surgery [10,[20][21][22][23]. Vice versa, concepts implementing practical medical skills in the preclinical curriculum may help to strengthen the professional identity of surgeons and anatomists, combining academic surgery and with clinically relevant anatomy [4,20,21,24].…”

Resident teachers in anatomy: Valuable asset! Endangered species?

“…In the second article, Haubert et al (2011) from The Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio describe the involvement of surgical residents and surgeons in several first and second year educational programs and discuss how this impacts the feelings medical students have about surgeons and surgical disciplines. The hope of the authors was that participation of surgical residents and surgeons in these early courses in medical school would positively impact how medical students feel about surgery as a career option.…”