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Association of General Surgery Resident Remediation and Program Director Attitudes With Resident Attrition. JAMA surgery Schwed, A. C., Lee, S. L., Salcedo, E. S., Reeves, M. E., Inaba, K. n., Sidwell, R. A., Amersi, F. n., Are, C. n., Arnell, T. D., Damewood, R. B., Dent, D. L., Donahue, T. n., Gauvin, J. n., Hartranft, T. n., Jacobsen, G. R., Jarman, B. T., Melcher, M. L., Mellinger, J. D., Morris, J. B., Nehler, M. n., Smith, B. R., Wolfe, M. n., Kaji, A. H., de Virgilio, C. n. 2017

Abstract

Previous studies of resident attrition have variably included preliminary residents and likely overestimated categorical resident attrition. Whether program director attitudes affect attrition has been unclear.To determine whether program director attitudes are associated with resident attrition and to measure the categorical resident attrition rate.This multicenter study surveyed 21 US program directors in general surgery about their opinions regarding resident education and attrition. Data on total resident complement, demographic information, and annual attrition were collected from the program directors for the study period of July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2015. The general surgery programs were chosen on the basis of their geographic location, previous collaboration with some coauthors, prior work in surgical education and research, or a program director willing to participate. Only categorical surgical residents were included in the study; thus, program directors were specifically instructed to exclude any preliminary residents in their responses.Five-year attrition rates (2010-2011 to 2014-2015 academic years) as well as first-time pass rates on the General Surgery Qualifying Examination and General Surgery Certifying Examination of the American Board of Surgery (ABS) were collected. High- and low-attrition programs were compared.The 21 programs represented different geographic locations and 12 university-based, 3 university-affiliated, and 6 independent program types. Programs had a median (interquartile range [IQR]) number of 30 (20-48) categorical residents, and few of those residents were women (median [IQR], 12 [5-17]). Overall, 85 of 966 residents (8.8%) left training during the study period: 15 (17.6%) left after postgraduate year 1, 34 (40.0%) after postgraduate year 2, and 36 (42.4%) after postgraduate year 3 or later. Forty-four residents (51.8%) left general surgery for another surgical discipline, 21 (24.7%) transferred to a different surgery program, and 18 (21.2%) exited graduate medical education altogether. Each program had an annual attrition rate ranging from 0.73% to 6.0% (median [IQR], 2.5% [1.5%-3.4%]). Low-attrition programs were more likely than high-attrition programs to use resident remediation (21.0% vs 6.8%; P?

View details for PubMedID 28813585