Technical training in surgery: the trainee's view

A questionnaire designed to investigate the technical training of general surgical trainees was distributed throughout Scotland. A total of 222 questionnaires were sent out and 179 (81 per cent) were returned. Of the responders, 38 per cent felt that the overall operative workload was too small and the majority thought that there was too little emphasis on supervised operating. Two-thirds of trainees were generally satisfied with the amount of unsupervised operating, although a substantial proportion (21 per cent) sometimes felt out of their depth when performing delegated emergency operations. Few had attended craft workshops or travelled to other centres, but of those who had, most considered both activities to be very useful. Photographic atlases and videos were not generally felt to be of great value by those who had used them. The majority of trainees did not believe that research activity had interfered excessively with their technical training.