3.1.4 Exposure
Several studies to support the hypothesis of early exposure and its
impact on a career in CT surgery have been investigated with the
earliest included in this review being Chen H. et al. (15). Students who
had ambitions to subspecialise in CT and other surgical specialties saw
significantly more procedures in their respective subspecialty
interests. This study concluded that while students had equal exposure
to general surgery due to medical school curricula requirements, their
exposure to other surgical specialties including CT surgery correlated
highly with their interest in the respective fields. From the years
2003-2012, 30 US medical students in a single institution participated
in a program designed to expose students to basic surgical skills,
clinical operations, and developing research projects with a cardiac
surgeon. Of the 23 who applied for residency, 12 (52.2%) matched into
general surgery while 2 matched into CT surgery. (14)
In Algethami M.R. et al. (5), 74.6% of final year students and 88.3%
of students felt they were not sufficiently exposed to CT surgery. Only
7.8% of the students were assigned mentors where 24% of them managed
to obtain contact details from CT surgeons for future research purposes
and 8.4% attended conferences or careers day. 56.4% of those without
mentors revealed they had no interest in CT surgery and 70.4% were
unaware of the current CT training pathway. The impact exposure has on
career choice was further explored in other studies in the UK. In
Gasparini M. et al. (16), 71% had some CT exposure whilst 24.7% had
extracurricular exposure. Confidence in career choice in CT increased by
an average of 20.4% (p=0.0244) from 5.76/10 to 7.24/10 after exposure.
Preece R. et al. (12) showed that 75% of the cohort reported a lack of
exposure within the curricula and only 13% had extracurricular exposure
via conferences or careers day. Burnside M. et al. (17) concluded that
of the 20 trainees that had CT jobs, 75% indicated returning to CT
surgery while trainees that had no CT surgery jobs chose not to return
to the specialty either as a 1st or 2nd preference.