Surgical training, duty-hour restrictions, and implications for meeting the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education core competencies: views of surgical interns compared with program directors.

Objective

To describe the perspectives of surgical interns regarding the implications of the new Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) duty-hour regulations for their training.

Design

We compared responses of interns and surgery program directors on a survey about the proposed ACGME mandates.

Setting

Eleven general surgery residency programs.

Participants

Two hundred fifteen interns who were administered the survey during the summer of 2011 and a previously surveyed national sample of 134 surgery program directors.

Main Outcome Measures

Perceptions of the implications of the new duty-hour restrictions on various aspects of surgical training, including the 6 ACGME core competencies of graduate medical education, measured using 3-point scales (increase, no change, or decrease).

Results

Of 215 eligible surgical interns, 179 (83.3%) completed the survey. Most interns believed that the new duty-hour regulations will decrease continuity with patients (80.3%), time spent operating (67.4%), and coordination of patient care (57.6%), while approximately half believed that the changes will decrease their acquisition of medical knowledge (48.0%), development of surgical skills (52.8%), and overall educational experience (51.1%). Most believed that the changes will improve or will not alter other aspects of training, and 61.5% believed that the new standards will decrease resident fatigue. Surgical interns were significantly less pessimistic than surgery program directors regarding the implications of the new duty-hour restrictions on all aspects of surgical training (P .05 for all comparisons).

Conclusions

Although less pessimistic than program directors, interns beginning their training under the new paradigm of duty-hour restrictions have significant concerns about the effect of these regulations on the quality of their training.