Surgical Residents as Teachers: Implementing an Educators' Curriculum for Surgical Residents

Sandra Jarvis-Selinger, Surgery, Faculty of Medicine
Karen Joughin, Assistant Dean, Faculty of Medicine / MD Undergraduate Program / Surgery
Morad Hameed, Assistant Professor / Program Director, Postgraduate Education, General Surgery
Scott W. Bloom, Clinical Assistant Professor, Surgery / Dept of Surgery, The Richmond Hospital Surgery
Dan Pratt, Professor, Educational Studies / Senior Scholar, Centre for Health Education Scholarship
Shaun Deen, Resident, General Surgery
Tracy Scott, Clinical Educator Fellow, Centre for Health Education Scholarship

Surgical residents play a critical role in the education of medical students and other resident colleagues. Teaching during residency also enhances residents’ own learning. This acknowledgement of resident teaching roles has led professional organizations such as the AAMC, ACGME, and LCME to prioritize the acquisition of teaching skills by residents. Therefore, it is not surprising that there is an increasing need for educational programs to support and develop residents as teachers. Many other specialty programs throughout the country have developed courses with a variety of approaches and assessments of teaching.

The current proposal builds on this work and aims to develop, implement, and evaluate a modular, scalable, longitudinal ‘surgical residents as teachers’ (SRAT) program that is developmentally appropriate across residency years. This SRAT program will allow surgical residency programs to implement various teaching modules, each of which is targeted at specific residency years. The program will provide a standardized, developmental curriculum that is responsive to the pedagogical needs, competencies and roles of junior and senior residents across the several years of their training.

Sandra Jarvis-Selinger, Surgery, Faculty of Medicine
Karen Joughin, Interim Associate Dean, MD Undergraduate Program and Surgery, Faculty of Medicine
Morad Hameed, Assistant Professor / Program Director, Postgraduate Education, General Surgery, Faculty of Medicine
Scott W. Bloom, Associate Program Director, Surgical Training Program, Staten Island University Hospital
Dan Pratt, Professor, Educational Studies / Senior Scholar, Centre for Health Education Scholarship
Yasmin Halwani, Resident, General Surgery, Faculty of Medicine
Shaun Deen, Fellow, Thoracic Surgery, University of Calgary
Tracy Scott, Clinical Educator Fellow, Centre for Health Education Scholarship
Ravi Sidhi, Program Director, Postgraduate Education, Surgery, Faculty of Medicine
Henry Broekhuyse, Director, Postgraduate Education, Orthopaedics
Stephen Pinney, Orthipaedics / St. Paul's Hospital Site
William Gourlay, Assistant Professor, Urologic Sciences / St. Paul's Hospital Site
Sonia Butterworth, Associate Program Director / Clinical Assistant Professor, General Surgery

Surgical residents play a critical role in the education of medical students and other resident colleagues. Teaching during residency also enhances resident’s own learning (Morrison et al., 2005). Recognizing that there is an increasing need for educational programs to develop and support residents as teachers, the “Surgical Residents as Teachers” (SRAT) program began in April 2010 to develop, implement, and evaluate a standardized, modular, longitudinal curriculum that is developmentally appropriate across residency years, and can be integrated into the existing residency education and clinical rotations. This proposal seeks support to continue the development of the SRAT program, and build on the achievements of Year 1 (please see attached progress report). Consisting of workshops, academic half-days (AHDs), and one-on-one support, the SRAT program supports the overall vision of the Departments of Surgery, Orthopaedics and Urology to educate future surgeons in all of their roles, including that of becoming an effective communicator and teacher.