Surgical Education
Innovation in internship preparation: an operative anatomy course increases senior medical students' knowledge and confidence

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjsurg.2012.07.043Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

An operative anatomy course was developed within the construct of a surgical internship preparatory curriculum. This course provided fourth-year medical students matching into a surgical residency the opportunity to perform intern-level procedures on cadavers under the guidance of surgical faculty members.

Methods

Senior medical students performed intern-level procedures on cadavers with the assistance of faculty surgeons. Students' confidence, anxiety, and procedural knowledge were evaluated both preoperatively and postoperatively. Preoperative and postoperative data were compared both collectively and based on individual procedures.

Results

Student confidence and procedural knowledge significantly increased and anxiety significantly decreased when preoperative and postoperative data were compared (P < .05). Students reported moderate to significant improvement in their ability to perform a variety of surgical tasks.

Conclusions

The consistent improvement in confidence, knowledge, and anxiety justifies further development of an operative anatomy course, with future assessment of the impact on performance in surgical residency.

Section snippets

Participants

A total of 23 students participated in the University of Michigan's operative anatomy component of the surgical boot camp in 2009 (n = 12) and in 2010 (n = 11). These students chose to take this course as an elective to prepare them for residencies in general surgery (n = 12), urology (n = 7), neurosurgery (n = 3), and obstetrics and gynecology (n = 1). The 12 participants included 7 female and 16 male students. All students who enrolled in the course were informed that data would be generated

Assessment of student confidence and anxiety

Students' responses on the confidence surveys reveal a significant increase in confidence from baseline before the course compared with after completion of the course for all procedures measured collectively with respect to their knowledge of anatomy, intraoperative complications, and procedural ability (Table 1A–C). There was also a significant decrease in the anxiety reported in association with performance of the procedure after completion of the course (Table 1D). Although there was a

Comments

The transition between medical school and surgical internship can be stressful; students often feel unprepared and are anxious about their performance. To ease this process, some medical schools are offering surgical internship preparatory courses to senior medical students. These courses have been shown to significantly improve students' confidence, performance of basic surgical skills, and procedural knowledge.2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 To augment the University of Michigan Medical School's surgical

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The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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