{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,1]],"date-time":"2025-11-01T19:57:03Z","timestamp":1762027023291,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":28,"publisher":"Springer Science and Business Media LLC","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,10,27]],"date-time":"2020-10-27T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1603756800000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"},{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,10,27]],"date-time":"2020-10-27T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1603756800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["link.springer.com"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["BMC Med Educ"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2020,12]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title><jats:sec>\n<jats:title>Background<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>Due to disparities in their regional distribution of the surgical specialists, those who have finished \u201chousemanship,\u201d which is the equivalent of an internship, are serving as main surgical care providers in rural areas in Ghana. However, the quantitative volume of postgraduate surgical training experience and the level of self-reported confidence after formal training have not been investigated in detail in sub-Saharan Africa.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec><jats:sec>\n<jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>The quality-assessment data of the Department of surgery at a regional hospital in Ghana was obtained from the convenience samples of house officers (HOs) who had their surgical rotation before July 2019. A self-reported questionnaire with 5-point Likert-type scale and open-ended responses regarding the 35 topics listed as learning objectives by the Medical and Dental Council of Ghana were retrospectively reviewed to investigate the volume of surgical experience, self-reported confidence, and perceived training needs.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec><jats:sec>\n<jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>Among 52 respondents, the median self-reported number of patients experienced for each condition was less than 11 cases. More than 40% of HOs reported that they had never experienced cases of liver tumor (<jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\u2009=\u200921, 40.4%), portal hypertension (<jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\u2009=\u200923, 44.2%), or cancer chemotherapy\/cancer therapy (<jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\u2009=\u200926, 50.0%). The median self-confidence score was 3.69 (interquartile range, 3.04\u2009~\u20094.08). More than 50% of HOs scored \u22642 points on the self-confidence scale of gastric cancer (<jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\u2009=\u200928, 53.8%), colorectal cancer (<jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\u2009=\u200931, 59.6%), liver tumors (<jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\u2009=\u200932, 61.5%), and cancer chemotherapy\/cancer therapy (<jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\u2009=\u200938, 73.1%). The top 3 reasons for not feeling confident were the limited number of patients (<jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\u2009=\u200942, 80.8%), resources and infrastructure (<jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\u2009=\u200921, 40.4%), and amount of supervision (<jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\u2009=\u200918, 34.6%). Eighteen HOs (34.6%) rated their confidence in their surgical skills as \u22642 points. Of all respondents, 76.9% (<jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\u2009=\u200940) were satisfied with their surgical rotation and 84.6% (<jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\u2009=\u200944) perceived the surgical rotation as relevant to their future work. Improved basic surgical skills training (<jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\u2009=\u200927, 51.9%) and improved supervision (<jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\u2009=\u200918, 34.6%) were suggested as a means to improve surgical rotation.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec><jats:sec>\n<jats:title>Conclusions<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>Surgical rotation during housemanship (internship) should be improved in terms of cancer treatment, surgical skills, and supervision to improve the quality of training, which is closely related to the quality of surgical care in rural areas.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1186\/s12909-020-02319-7","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,10,27]],"date-time":"2020-10-27T12:05:57Z","timestamp":1603800357000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":6,"title":["Self-reported confidence and perceived training needs of surgical interns at a regional hospital in Ghana: a questionnaire survey"],"prefix":"10.1186","volume":"20","author":[{"given":"Mee Joo","family":"Kang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3801-7978","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Reuben Kwesi Sakyi","family":"Ngissah","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,10,27]]},"reference":[{"issue":"2","key":"2319_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"154","DOI":"10.1001\/archsurg.2009.263","volume":"145","author":"AL Kushner","year":"2010","unstructured":"Kushner AL, Cherian MN, Noel L, Spiegel DA, Groth S, Etienne C. 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The Ethics Review Committee of Ghana Health Service advised the authors to get an ethical clearance from the study site; hence this study received institutional permission with exemption of written consent from the Greater Accra Regional Hospital, Accra, Republic of Ghana.","order":1,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Ethics approval and consent to participate"}},{"value":"Not applicable.","order":2,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Consent for publication"}},{"value":"The authors declare that they have no competing interests.","order":3,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Competing interests"}}],"article-number":"386"}}