Abstract:

Background/ Aim:
The challenges faced by foundation year trainees during surgical on-calls prompted the implementation of an annual surgical skills course in the foundation year 1 teaching program in Blackpool Teaching Hospitals in 2020. This course focuses on common surgical emergencies and technical skills essential for managing acute cases and supporting surgeries. The study aims to evaluate the current course design, seeking areas for improvement to ensure its continued effectiveness and value in equipping trainees with the confidence and proficiency needed to handle acute surgical scenarios and assist proficiently in operating theatres.

Method:
This one-day course comprised three lectures delivered by specialty registrars, covering common emergencies in general surgery, urology, and orthopaedics. Subsequently, skills workshops focused on suture and knot-tying, incision and drainage techniques, and laparoscopic skills. Trainees were then asked to complete a post-course questionnaire content usefulness of sessions, ‘What did they like about the session?’ and ‘What the course can be improved?’

Result:
There were 27 foundation year 1 doctors who attended and all of them gave feedback. After analysis of feedback, five themes of potential improvements are identified as follows:
(1) content such as post-operative emergencies, more cases accompanied by imaging interpretation, follow-up questions and quizzes,
(2) teaching methods such as one-to-one focused teaching and inclusion of competitions in skills practice,
(3) workshop suggestion such as urinary catheter training, local anaesthetic injection, and
(4) equipment such as more high-fidelity laparoscopic simulators. This was accompanied by a notable satisfaction level among learners, with lecture content receiving a 97.5% rating of usefulness (rated 4 or 5 on a 5-point Likert scale), whilst the skills workshop achieved a satisfaction rate of 98.73%.

Conclusion:
This study not only highlights the areas of improvement which will be useful in implementing changes for the next cohort for the sustainability of the project, but it can inform other institutions to replicate similar surgical skills courses.

Keywords:

Surgical education, surgical skills, junior doctors, sustainability.