Self-reported confidence and perceived training needs of surgical interns at a regional hospital in Ghana: a questionnaire survey

Abstract

Background Due to disparities in their regional distribution of the surgical specialists, those who have finished “housemanship,” which is the equivalent of an internship, are serving as main surgical care providers in rural areas in Ghana. However, the quantitative volume of postgraduate surgical training experience and the level of self-reported confidence after formal training have not been investigated in detail in sub-Saharan Africa. Methods The quality-assessment data of the Department of surgery at a regional hospital in Ghana was obtained from the convenience samples of house officers (HOs) who had their surgical rotation before July 2019. A self-reported questionnaire with 5-point Likert-type scale and open-ended responses regarding the 35 topics listed as learning objectives by the Medical and Dental Council of Ghana were retrospectively reviewed to investigate the volume of surgical experience, self-reported confidence, and perceived training needs. Results Among 52 respondents, the median self-reported number of patients experienced for each condition was less than 11 cases. More than 40% of HOs reported that they had never experienced cases of liver tumor (n = 21, 40.4%), portal hypertension (n = 23, 44.2%), or cancer chemotherapy/cancer therapy (n = 26, 50.0%). The median self-confidence score was 3.69 (interquartile range, 3.04 ~ 4.08). More than 50% of HOs scored ≤2 points on the self-confidence scale of gastric cancer (n = 28, 53.8%), colorectal cancer (n = 31, 59.6%), liver tumors (n = 32, 61.5%), and cancer chemotherapy/cancer therapy (n = 38, 73.1%). The top 3 reasons for not feeling confident were the limited number of patients (n = 42, 80.8%), resources and infrastructure (n = 21, 40.4%), and amount of supervision (n = 18, 34.6%). Eighteen HOs (34.6%) rated their confidence in their surgical skills as ≤2 points. Of all respondents, 76.9% (n = 40) were satisfied with their surgical rotation and 84.6% (n = 44) perceived the surgical rotation as relevant to their future work. Improved basic surgical skills training (n = 27, 51.9%) and improved supervision (n = 18, 34.6%) were suggested as a means to improve surgical rotation. Conclusions Surgical rotation during housemanship (internship) should be improved in terms of cancer treatment, surgical skills, and supervision to improve the quality of training, which is closely related to the quality of surgical care in rural areas.

Current status and issues regarding surgical education in the region: a questionnaire survey in Oita prefecture in Japan

“…Fonseca AL, et al reported that lack of confidence of graduating general surgery residents in performing open vascular maneuvers varied regionally and was associated with both demographic and program-specific factors [ 8 ]. Kang MJ, et al described that because there are the disparities in their regional distribution of the surgical specialists in Ghana, the current state of training at teaching hospitals should be investigated to decide where and how long the surgical rotation should take place [ 9 ]. A nationwide questionnaire survey on acquisition of Board-Certified Surgeon status in the Japan Surgical Society showed that surgeons in regional areas tend to have less experience with surgical operations and fewer opportunities to undergo regular off-the-job training outside the operating room than those in urban areas [ 10 ].…”

Evaluation of Self-Perceived Confidence and Competence in Oral Surgery among Final Year Undergraduate Students in Greece

“…19,24,25 Admittedly the present study bears the limitation of evaluating the self-perceived confidence of the students. Although it is considered that there is a positive correlation between reported confidence and clinical experience, 26 self-assessment of surgical skills may be inaccurate, 27 particularly in those who perform poorly. 28 Moreover, overconfident graduates can put their patients at risk when carrying out surgical procedures without actual competency.…”

Data Analysis of Educational Evaluation Using K-Means Clustering Method

“…The evaluation adopts evolutionary algorithm, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, multivariate statistical analysis method, etc., to obtain effective weights, and the data items are summed according to the weights to obtain the quantitative score evaluation value [ 16 ]. Kang et al selected some data from a large-scale data set, used these data to construct an adjacency matrix, and obtained eigenvectors by eigendecomposition of the adjacency matrix, and finally used Nyström to approximate the eigensolution of the original matrix [ 17 ]. Aiming at the main methods of DM, Hou et al studied the ideas and applications of related algorithms, analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of existing methods and compared them.…”