Public Perceptions and Informational Needs Regarding Surgical Residents.

Objective: Identify what topics are of most interest to patients regarding surgical residents.

Design: Survey of general public describing a hypothetical surgery and then assessing comfort level with resident involvement in surgery, reactions to disclosure statements regarding resident involvement, and desires for additional information. This data was used to produce an amended statement about surgical residents and their involvement in a hypothetical surgery to determine the impact of increased information on participant comfort.

Setting: Online survey via Mechanical Turk.

Participants: Our sample was broadly representative of the United States based on race and age, but with higher education level than United States census data.

Results: Using a combination of hierarchical clustering, weighted averages, and VAS scoring, questions that were most highly valued by participants were related to what the resident will be doing in the operation and the impact of resident involvement. Participants who had a past negative experience with residents assigned higher importance to all questions, even those that may be seen as not clinically relevant. Increasing the amount of proactively provided information did not have a significant effect on comfort (p = 0.219) when compared to our baseline statement, except with those who reported past negative experience with residents (p = 0.039).

Conclusions: These results demonstrate that the majority of potential patients want to know specific details about the residents' skills, what they will be doing in their surgery, and the impact of their participation. Surgeons should be attuned to patients with past negative experiences, who may desire more information. Additional information alone may not be sufficient to comfort some patients, and future research should consider information delivery styles and interpersonal effects on patient comfort level.