Standardized residency training: An equalizer for residents at different hospitals in Shanghai, China?

BACKGROUND: The residency training programme in Shanghai is the first in China to become standardized; however, there has been no evidence that the programme equalizes training quality. This cross-sectional study examined whether residents in all disciplines at different hospitals perceived equivalent improvement in professional competency after this programme. METHODS: We recruited all 2283 residents who enrolled in the programme in 2013. Before graduation, the residents reported their perceived competency improvement as the primary outcome and their hospital of residency, awareness of the programme's requirements and policies, and demographic information as explanatory variables. We ran multivariate linear regressions and mixed-effect multilevel regression to examine whether the hospital type and the university affiliation were associated with perceived improvement. RESULTS: A total of 2208 residents completed the survey. Although the adjusted multilevel regression analysis showed that the improvement scores at tertiary specialty hospitals and tertiary general hospitals were lower than those at secondary general hospitals, the difference was not statistically significant. No variance in improvement scores could be explained by the hospital type or university affiliation. CONCLUSION: Receiving residency training at hospitals that were traditionally less resourced did not compromise educational quality based on the perception of the residents.