Surgical Residents as Teachers (SRAT)

Purpose

Surgical residents are trained to be clinicians, but also expected to be teachers.

It has been estimated that at any given moment in the United States, some 100,000 medical residents on hospital wards are working alongside half of the nation’s medical students, and that these students will receive 20% to 70% of their clinical instruction from residents (Rotenberg et al., 2000). Surgical residents play a critical role in the education of not only medical students, but other junior and senior resident colleagues as well.

Teaching during residency has also been shown to enhance residents’ own learning (Morrison et al., 2005). At both ends of the learning spectrum, effective teaching by residents has important and lasting consequences for the surgeons of the future.  The SRAT program aims to support residents as they develop as teachers, by helping to improve how they are trained.

Overview

Working with postgraduate medical departments, the eHealth Strategy Office is developing, implementing and evaluating a standardized, modular and longitudinal curriculum that is

  • developmentally appropriate across residency years;
  • responsive to the pedagogical needs, competencies and roles of junior and senior surgical residents in specific specializations (e.g., general surgery, orthopaedics);
  • integrated into existing residency educational and clinical rotations; and
  • grounded in the notion that to excel as a teacher, residents must grow as learners.

Highlights

Highlights of the SRAT program to date include:

  • Conducting baseline and on-going surveys of surgical residents’ educational needs and teaching responsibilities.
  • Delivering SRAT-specific education sessions during the UBC Faculty of Medicine’s resident introduction CRASH course.
  • Delivering an Observed Structured Teaching Exercise (OSTE) training course to UBC surgical residents.
  • Delivering several SRAT curriculum modules during the UBC Department of General Surgery and Department of Orthopaedic Surgery Academic Half-Days.

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