60% of Virtual Surgery Rotators Ranked in New Study

Virtual orthopedic surgery training is growing by leaps and bounds. A new study from the Campbell Clinic in Memphis, Tennessee, surveyed 42 medical students who had participated in a virtual clinical and academic training program as part of their residency program. The result—60% of the students trained virtually were accepted into high quality programs and ranked. Here are the details.

The authors of this study, a multicenter team, decided to look back and check on the effectiveness of virtual learning in medical education. Their work, “Virtual orthopaedic surgery away rotation benefits both the program and applicant: a survey of participants,” appears in the May/June 2022 edition of Current Orthopaedic Practice.

Derek Kelly, M.D., study co-author and member of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Biomedical Engineering, University of Tennessee – Campbell Clinic in Memphis, explained the genesis of the study to OTW. “We wanted to provide an opportunity for students to experience at least a bit of the clinical and academic parts of our residency. We also wanted to provide some online social interactions between the students and our residents and staff surgeons.”

“Unfortunately, the nature of research—including data collections, statistical analysis, manuscript preparation, journal review and publication—means that actually publication is a bit late to allow most programs to duplicate our efforts when it means the most to students.”

“Nevertheless, online, virtual, or hybrid learning is here to stay for most programs. So perhaps there is still time to create such an opportunity in other places.”

The team implemented virtual orthopedic surgery away rotations at two orthopedic surgery residency programs, with curricula consisting of 2 weeks of 6-8 hours per week of virtual content. A total of 42 fourth-year medical students were asked to complete a 22-item survey about the virtual programs; 38 finished the survey. The researchers also collected information on interview offers, interview acceptances, rank position, and acceptance into orthopedic surgery residency programs.

Survey Results

The researchers found that 39 medical students were accepted into residency positions, 21 of which were in orthopedic surgery.

“We found that 25 of the 42 virtual rotators were ranked by at least one of the virtual orthopedic surgery away rotations programs,” Dr. Kelly told OTW. “So, these virtual rotations served to provide the programs with high quality students to both interview and rank. We have decided to continue the virtual orthopedic surgery away rotations indefinitely, or at least as long as there is demand because we see a great deal of benefit to both the students and to our program.”