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.