The State of Plastic Surgery Education Outside of the Operating Room.

BACKGROUND Plastic surgery education consists of technical skills, surgical decision-making, and the knowledge necessary to provide safe patient care. Competency in these modalities is ensured by requiring case minimums and oral and written examinations. However, there is a paucity of information detailing what teaching modalities residency programs utilize outside of the operating room (OR). METHODS A 16-question survey was sent to all integrated and independent program directors. Information regarding non-surgical resident education was collected and analyzed. RESULTS There were 44- responses (46%). Most programs had 6-10 faculty (43%), and a majority (85%) required faculty to participate in resident education outside of the OR. Residents most commonly had 3-4 hours (43%) of protected educational time 1 day per week (53%). Non-surgical education consisted of weekly lectures by attendings (44%) and resident (54%), as well as weekly CoreQuest (48%), teaching rounds (38%), and Plastic Surgery Education Network Lectures (PSEN) (55%). Monthly activities included morbidity and mortality conference (M&M) (81%) and Journal Club (86%). Indications conference was either monthly (41%) or weekly (39%). Cadaver labs, visiting professors, board prep, in-service review, and meetings with program director occurred yearly or several times a year. Forty-nine percent of programs sponsor one educational course per resident. In addition, most programs (65%) do not receive outside funding for education. CONCLUSION These findings improve our understanding of the current state of non-surgical resident education in plastic surgery. They illustrate that residents participate in a diverse number of non-surgical educational activities without any significant standardization.