ISSN: 2578-482X
Authors: Tarras SL ,Somerset AE, White MT and Edelman DA*
The Surgical Council on Resident Education (SCORE) program was designed to create a national surgical curriculum for residents. This curriculum includes a list of topics to be covered in a five-year general surgery residency training program. A resident in-service exam (ABSITE) is administered annually to assess knowledge of applied science and management of clinical problems. We hypothesized that resident use of the SCORE curriculum positively correlates with ABSITE scores. All PGY-2, PGY-3, and PGY-4 general surgery residents for two academic cycles (July 1, 2017 through January 24, 2019) were included. Individual total time on the SCORE portal in minutes was collected. ABSITE scores for the same time period were used for comparison. Residents who scored 30th percentile or below were identified as requiring remediation. The data was analyzed with descriptive statistics, student’s-t test, and ANOVA with p<0.05 considered significant. There were 51 residents included in the study (16 PGY-2s, 17 PGY-3s, and 18 PGY-4s). There was no difference in SCORE usage (p=0.648) or ABSITE percentile (p=0.353) between the different PGYs. There were 20 residents that scored 30th percentile or below on the ABSITE. The residents that scored above the 30th percentile used SCORE significantly longer (2742 min vs. 1164 min) compared to residents that scored 30th percentile or below (p=0.022). Increased usage of the SCORE portal was associated with higher performance on the ABSITE. Further investigation is needed to determine which aspects of the portal lead to improved scores. This study provides additional evidence that surgery residents should use the SCORE portal to achieve appropriate surgical and clinical knowledge.
Keywords: General surgery; Surgical Council; Surgery Residents
