A survey of general surgery clerkships in Australian and New Zealand medical schools.
BACKGROUND
Surgical clerkships facilitate development of knowledge and competency, but their structure and content vary. Establishment of new medical schools and raising student numbers are new challenges to the provision of standardized surgical teaching across Australasian medical schools. A survey was conducted to investigate how Australian and New Zealand medical schools structure their general surgery clerkships.


METHODS
Between April and August 2009, a 30-item web-based survey was electronically sent to academic and administrative staff members of 22 Australian and New Zealand medical schools.


RESULTS
Eighteen surveys were returned by 16 medical schools, summarizing 20 clerkships. Ten schools utilize five or more different clinical teaching sites for general surgery clerkships and these include urban and rural hospitals from both public and private health sectors. Student teaching and assessment methods are similar between clerkships and standardized across clinical sites during 10 and 16 of the clerkships, respectively. Only eight of the surveyed clerkships use centralized assessments to evaluate student learning outcomes across different clinical sites. Four clerkships do not routinely use direct observational student assessments.


CONCLUSIONS
Australian and New Zealand medical schools commonly assign students to multiple diverse clinical sites during general surgery clerkships and they vary in their approaches to standardizing curriculum delivery and student assessment across these sites. Differences in student learning are likely to exist and deficiencies in clinical ability may go undetected. This should be a focus for future improvement.
Department of Surgery, University of Auckland, New Zealand. TzuChieh.Yu@middlemore.co.nz
Tzu-Chieh
TC
Yu
Benjamin Robert Logan
BR
Wheeler
Andrew Graham
AG
Hill
D001315:Australia; D002982:Clinical Clerkship / Q000458:organization & administration*; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003479:Curriculum; D013502:General Surgery / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D020380:Needs Assessment; D009520:New Zealand