Residents' Impressions of the Impact of Advanced Practice Providers on Surgical Training

Abstract

Background: To ensure that residents are appropriately trained in the era of the 80-hour work-week, training programs have restructured resident duties and hired advanced practice providers (APPs). However, the effect of APPs on surgical training remains unknown.

Study design: We created a survey using a modified Delphi technique to examine the interaction between residents and APPs across practice settings (inpatient, outpatient, and operating room). We identified the following domains: administrative tasks, clinical experience, operative experience, and overall impressions. We administered the survey to residents across 7 surgical training programs at a single institution and assessed internal reliability with Cronbach's α.

Results: Fifty residents responded (77% participation rate). The majority reported APPs reduced the time spent on administrative tasks, such as completing documentation (96%) and answering pages (88%). For clinical experience, 62% of residents thought that APPs had no impact on the amount of time spent evaluating consult patients, and 80% reported no difference in the number of bedside procedures performed. However, 77% of residents reported a reduction in the time spent counseling patients. When APPs worked in the inpatient setting, 90% of residents reported leaving the operating room less frequently to manage patients. When APPs were present in the operating room, 34% of residents thought they were less likely to perform key parts of the case. Cronbach's α showed excellent to good reliability for the administrative tasks (0.96), clinical experience (0.76), operative experience (0.69), and overall impressions (0.66) domains.

Conclusions: Most residents report that the integration of APPs has decreased the administrative burden. The reduction in patient counseling might be an unrecognized and unintended consequence of implementing APPs. The perceived effect on operative experience is dependent on the role of the APPs.