Abstract

Final year medical students are only allocated to 5 weeks attachment in General Surgery. Exposure to surgery during their attachment is therefore limited and variable depending on the case mix availability. When the students attend the surgery in the operating theatre, the views of the surgical field is often limited and it is difficult for the operating surgeon to explain every step of the surgery and teach them whilst carrying out a difficult procedure in a timely manner. Emergency general surgical operations are even more unpredictable, with very sick patients requiring challenging surgery and are often carried out at night. Therefore, students rarely get a chance to see them during their surgical block. Therefore, we have produced good quality general surgical micromodules on six common emergency general surgery operations.

Each module contains comprehensive information on pathophysiology, patient presentation, relevant investigations with examples and management – including narrated short operative videos on the emergency general surgical procedure. Each module is 10-20 minutes long which can be accessed by the students online 24/7 on any platform via the CUHK blackboard.

Pre- and post- MCQs has shown that all students has shown an improvement in their score (mean 54.2% to 83.3%). All students reported that the topics covered were relevant and 96% reported the content was just right for their level. 82.3% said they would definitely use the micromodules in the future when available.

In conclusion, this surgical micro-modules will allow students to have access to good quality learning material at their fingertips to gain basic knowledge on the topic, allowing them to have higher order thinking and deeper learning experience on the ward.