Acute Care Surgery Education in US Medical Schools: A Systematic Review of the Current Literature and Report of a Medical Student Experience

Abstract

There is currently little known about acute care surgery (ACS) education in US medical schools. The purpose of this paper was to systematically review the state of the literature describing ACS training at the medical school level and introduce an ACS education model provided to medical students at our institution. We conducted a comprehensive literature review using the PubMed database to identify all articles related to ACS (trauma surgery, emergency general surgery, and surgical critical care) and undergraduate medical education. A total of 376 articles were captured with our search strategy. The articles were reviewed for eligibility by 2 separate reviewers. We identified 3 relevant articles for our literature review. All studies were performed at level 1 trauma centers. The duration of ACS rotations ranges from 1 to 4 weeks with variable night call schedules. While several curricular changes have improved student perceptions on ACS education, none of the studies have thoroughly evaluated the impact on students' readiness or career choices for their postgraduate training. The current lack of information on ACS education in medical school has left us with a need to better understand this area in order to improve students' experience and exposure to the specialty. Future efforts should be placed on addressing current issues in ACS education and evaluating its impact on career choice of medical students.