Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant changes in healthcare. Infectious disease (ID) physicians were among the most affected, yet comparisons are scarce on training implementation and the levels of residents’ satisfaction between the pre-pandemic and the pandemic era. Methods: We conducted a nationwide cross-sectional survey among Croatian ID residents between May and July 2021. The survey included 34 Likert-scale and multiple-choice questions pertaining to training rotation interruptions, educational opportunities, work hours, symptoms of burnout and overall satisfaction. Results: The survey was completed by 52 (67.5%) ID trainees in Croatia. The curriculum-defined rotations were not met in real life before the pandemic (56.8%), and 63.5% of participants reported working exclusively with COVID-19 patients more than a year into the pandemic. The pre-pandemic educational opportunities included regular lectures for 61.4%, extra-curricular training for 59.1%, congress and symposia attendances for 52.3% and peer lectures for 27.3%. As many as 11.4% had never had a meeting with their mentor, while 59.1% only met in passing. Overtime work affected 90.9% of residents before and 96.1% during the pandemic. All burnout symptoms have increased from the pre-pandemic to the pandemic era. Overall satisfaction with specialty training has dropped from an average of 3.1 (SD 0.9) before the pandemic to 1.9 (SD 0.9) during the pandemic. Conclusions: Our survey among Croatian ID residents indicated problems with educational opportunities and disruption of the planned training rotations before the pandemic. These problems were aggravated during the pandemic, thus causing a plunge in resident satisfaction levels. A closer monitoring of adherence to the training curriculum is mandated, as well as improvements in mentorship programs and burnout detection and reduction activities.

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