"Pause" for Resident Education in the Operating Room.

Objective: To determine if asking residents to discuss their specific learning objectives with the attending physician prior to beginning a surgical case would improve the educational experience in the operating room.

Study design: This was a prospective nonrandomized cohort study utilizing a self-administered questionnaire. Prior to the intervention, residents and attendings were asked to fill out surveys evaluating the educational experience in the operating room. Subsequently, attending physicians were instructed to ask residents at the beginning of the surgery, "What are your goals for this surgical case?" During this intervention period, the same anonymous survey was filled out. Preintervention and postintervention answers were compared by t test and Fisher's exact test.

Results: A total of 49 preintervention and 47 postintervention resident-attending survey pairs were collected. After implementation of the intervention, 100% of residents reported having surgical goals for the procedure as compared to 45% prior to the intervention (p<0.0001). Additionally, during the intervention residents reported they were better able to maximize learning opportunities and were more satisfied with their participation in the case. Attending physicians were more likely to be aware of resident learning objectives after the intervention.

Conclusion: We propose the routine addition of an educational pause to the surgical time out.