The value of resident teaching to improve student perceptions of surgery clerkships and surgical career choices

Background A fundamental function of attending faculty is to teach and mentor medical students, but the benefit of the resident’s role is recognized increasingly. Methods Our Standardized Institutional Clinical Clerkship Assessment allows students to rate 27 factors relative to a clinical clerkship. Scores from 1998 to 2005 were used to evaluate our surgical clerkship program and to compare resident and attending teachers. Student surgery career choices also were monitored. Results Medical students routinely scored residents more highly than attending faculty. Attendings’ scores did not improve; however, residents’ teaching and overall clerkship scores improved during the study period and paralleled students’ increased selection of a surgical career. Conclusions Students perceived residents as teachers more than attendings. Residents may have significant influence over students’ career choice by their teaching and mentoring activities, which benefit attending efforts.