The popularity of surgical specialties is declining amongst Canadian medical students. Limited early exposure of students to surgery and minor involvement of surgeons in preclerkship education are barriers to creating interest in the field. Although many informal observerships and interest groups exist, there are no structured programs in Canada that offer preclerkship medical students a comprehensive exposure to surgery.
Twenty first-year medical students participated in the Surgical Exploration and Discovery (SEAD) Program. SEAD is a pilot project at the University of Toronto providing a unique combination of (1) observerships, (2) informal discussions on surgical careers, and (3) hands-on simulation workshops across all 7 direct-entry specialties within the Department of Surgery. All participants underwent pretraining and posttraining evaluation of learning through a paper-based knowledge test and all completed a structured survey on the benefit of the course.
Comparison of test scores revealed an overall significant improvement in learning (p
