Measuring medical students’ experience with surgical problems and procedures

Background: Measuring medical students’ experience on their surgical clerkship rotations to assess the adequacy of the breadth of exposure is essential for producing generalist clinicians. Methods: A Surgical Clinical Checklist was developed by surveying the surgical faculty for those surgical problems and procedures that every generalist physician should experience. The checklist was then distributed to 48 consecutive third-year medical students for completion during their core clerkship in surgery. Results: Students reported encounters with surgical procedures more frequently than with surgical problems (64.3% of procedures versus 21.9% of problems were encountered by 80% of respondents). Students actively participated as often as they reported passive observation alone. Students assigned to two different teaching sites encountered similar numbers of items at each site although the distribution of individual items was different. Conclusions: The Surgical Clinical Checklist provides a valuable measurement tool to assess student experiences on their surgical clerkship and can be used to direct future teaching initiatives.