The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Geographic Placement of Applicants to General Surgery Residency Programs.

Objective: COVID-19 greatly influenced medical education and the residency match. As new guidelines were established to promote safety, travel was restricted, visiting rotations discontinued, and residency interviews turned virtual. The purpose of this study is to assess the geographic trends in distribution of successfully matched General Surgery applicants prior to and after the implementation of pandemic guidelines, and what we can learn from them as we move forward.

Implementation of an Online Intraoperative Assessment of Technical Performance for Surgical Trainees.

Introduction: Assessment of surgical resident technical performance is an integral component of any surgical training program. Timely assessment delivered in a structured format is a critical step to enhance technical skills, but residents often report that the quality and quantity of timely feedback received is lacking. Moreover, the absence of written feedback with specificity can allow residents to seemingly progress in their operative milestones as a junior resident, but struggle as they progress into their postgraduate year 3 and above.

The "weekend effect" in pediatric surgery - increased mortality for children undergoing urgent surgery during the weekend.

Background: For a number of pediatric and adult conditions, morbidity and mortality are increased when patients present to the hospital on a weekend compared to weekdays. The objective of this study was to compare pediatric surgical outcomes following weekend versus weekday procedures.

Methods: Using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample and the Kids' Inpatient Database, we identified 439,457 pediatric (<18 years old) admissions from 1988 to 2010 that required a selected index surgical procedure (abscess drainage, appendectomy, inguinal hernia repair, open fracture reduction with internal fixation, or placement/revision of ventricular shunt) on the same day of admission.

Assessing the surgical and obstetrics-gynecology workload of medical officers: findings from 10 district hospitals in Ghana.

Hypothesis: Surgical and obstetrics-gynecology (Ob-Gyn) workload of medical officers (MOs) is substantial and may inform policies for training investment and surveillance to strengthen surgical care at district hospitals in Ghana.

Design: Observational study.

Setting: Academic research.

An evaluation of surgical site infections by wound classification system using the ACS-NSQIP.

Background: Surgical wound classification has been the foundation for infectious risk assessment, perioperative protocol development, and surgical decision-making. The wound classification system categorizes all surgeries into: clean, clean/contaminated, contaminated, and dirty, with estimated postoperative rates of surgical site infection (SSI) being 1%-5%, 3%-11%, 10%-17%, and over 27%, respectively. The present study evaluates the associated rates of the SSI by wound classification using a large risk adjusted surgical patient database.