DOES A TEACHING PROGRAMME IN DAY SURGERY IMPACT ON EFFICIENCY AND QUALITY OF CARE?

Background: Recent medical advances have led to an explosion in the use of day surgery, making traditional teaching untenable and necessitating a transfer of undergraduate teaching programmes into the day surgery setting. Concerns have been raised about the impact of teaching on efficiency and quality of care in this environment. Methods : Thirty-one final year medical students participated in a new teaching programme conducted in a dedicated day surgery unit in a major Australian public teaching hospital. Five commonly performed procedures were audited and analysed by a mixed model analysis of variance to determine whether students impacted significantly on operation time. Student performance was monitored using a logbook. Surgeons and nursing staff completed questionnaires about their perceptions of the impact of the programme on the overall efficiency of the day surgery unit. Results: Students had no significant effect on operation time for the procedures examined. Staff did not perceive that students had significantly detracted from the overall efficiency of the unit. An unexpected finding was the substantial contribution that students made to quality of patient care. Conclusions: A successful undergraduate medical teaching programme can be conducted in a day surgery setting without compromising efficiency and quality of care.