Non-physician practitioners' overall enhancement to a surgical resident's experience.

Purpose: The Mount Sinai Surgical Residency program uses physician assistants and nurse practitioners, jointly termed non-physician practitioners (NPPs), to adhere to the 80-hour work-week restrictions implemented by Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) resident duty hour requirements initiated in 2003. A survey was performed to determine how the integration of NPPs into the surgical subspecialty teams has affected surgical residents' perceptions of their education and overall residency experience. We review the roles of NPPs within surgical specialty teams as well as our survey findings about NPP and resident impressions about the NPP role.