Adapting Plastic Surgery Residency Training During COVID-19: The Experience of a Chilean University Hospital
- PDF / 453,733 Bytes
- 3 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 26 Downloads / 181 Views
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Adapting Plastic Surgery Residency Training During COVID-19: The Experience of a Chilean University Hospital Alfonso Navia1 • Rodrigo Tejos1 • Gonzalo Yan˜ez1 • Claudio Guerra1 Alvaro Cuadra1 • Susana Searle1
•
Received: 29 September 2020 / Accepted: 4 October 2020 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature and International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery 2020
Keywords Plastic surgery Training Resident Residency COVID-19 Pandemic
Level of Evidence V. This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266. Dear Sir, The COVID-19 pandemic not only has affected the activity of health systems but also the routine of postgraduate medical education [1]. While most non-surgical specialties have experienced an increase in demand, surgical specialties have shown a significant decline in their activity, concentrating mainly on emergency surgeries. In the case of plastic surgery residency (PSR), it presents an additional challenge since most of the surgical activity is elective [2]. For this reason, the PSR has had to design strategies to face the pandemic’s challenging changes. Previously, some authors have published the experience of their plastic surgery services to face this pandemic. Most of these studies have focused on the organizational structure, use of personal protection elements and safety of medical Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00266-020-02005-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Susana Searle [email protected] 1
Section of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Surgery Division, School of Medicine, Pontificia Universidad Cato´lica de Chile, Diagonal Paraguay 362, 8330077 Santiago, Chile
personnel contact with patients [3]. However, there is limited description of concrete measures to maintain resident education. Zingaretti et al. [2] surveyed Italian plastic surgery residents, with 90% of them agreeing that the significant decrease in surgical activity would impact their professional growth, proposing didactical virtual reality simulators to maintain anatomical and surgical training. Sliewah et al. [4] published their experience on the use of virtual education for residents, where they highlight the advantages and benefits of using virtual platforms and webinars. The PSR of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (PUC) lasts 3–4 years, depending on the choice to opt for an additional first year of non-clinical research with a master’s in science degree. We currently have 7 residents: 1 resident in the preclinical year, 2 first-year residents, 3 second-year residents and 1 third-year resident. The average number of monthly surgeries in a year without a pandemic is 50 cases. After COVID-19, this number has decreased to less than 10, negatively impac
Data Loading...
