?Influential? Intraoperative Educators and Variability of Teaching Styles

OBJECTIVES: Academic surgeons manage their role as intraoperative educators in a variety of ways. Such vari-ability is neither idiosyncratic nor is there a single best approach. This study sought to explore the practices of surgeons deemed influential by their residents, allowing insight into a variety of potentially effective practices.PARTICIPANTS: Constructivist grounded theory guided data collection and analysis. Data sources included sur-veys from senior surgical residents (PGY3-6) and recent graduates from an academic hospital in Canada (36% response rate), intraoperative observations of teaching interactions, and semi-structured interviews with observed surgeons. Rigour was supported by data trian-gulation, constant comparison, and collection to theoret-ical sufficiency. DESIGN: We developed a framework grouping effective teaching into three overlapping approaches: exacting, empowering, and fostering. The approaches differ based on the level of independence granted and the degree of expectation placed on individual residents. Each demon-strates different strategies for balancing the multiple supervisory roles and patient care obligations faced by academic surgeons. We also identified strategies that could be used across approaches to enhance learning.CONCLUSIONS: For surgical educators seeking to improve upon the quality of the intraoperative supervi-sion they provide, frameworks such as this may serve as models of effective supervision. Enhancing surgeons' knowledge of proven strategies, combined with reflect-ing on how they teach and how they balance responsibil-ities to patients and trainees, may allow them to broaden their educational practice.

Automated summary

This study explores the practices of influential surgeons as perceived by their residents, aiming to provide a variety of potentially effective practices for academic surgeons to improve their role as intraoperative educators. The researchers collected data through surveys, observations, and interviews, and developed a framework grouping effective teaching into three approaches: exacting, empowering, and fostering. The study suggests that frameworks like this can serve as models for improving the quality of intraoperative supervision and expanding educational practices.