Abstract
Purpose:
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education establishes minimum numbers of surgical procedures to be performed by residents as a prerequisite for graduation, and these surgical minimums must be met with patients’ consent for resident participation in their surgery. A retrospective chart review was performed to analyze specific pediatric patient characteristics relative to their parents' consent for resident participation in their child's strabismus surgery.
Methods:
Included in the study were pediatric patients (age <19) that received strabismus surgery with one private practice pediatric ophthalmologist during 2011 and 2012. Patient characteristics were analyzed individually in relationship to consenting “yes” or “no” for resident participation. Characteristics investigated were age, gender, gestational age at birth, primary strabismus surgery versus reoperation, insurance type, number of past surgeries, past medical history, and home location. The data were analyzed using Fisher exact and Chi-squared testing. As no patient identifiers were collected, the University of Nebraska Medical Center Institutional Review Board deemed this study exempt from requiring patient consent.
Results:
A total of 84 surgeries on 79 patients met the inclusion criteria. One patient was excluded because the consent form had not been filled out by the parent. Twenty-eight patients (34%) consented for resident participation in their surgery. Five patients had 2 surgeries each. Each surgical consent was analyzed separately. None of these 5 changed consent status (all opted “no”) between the first and second surgery. There was no statistical significance between those consenting and those non-consenting for resident participation in relationship to any of the individual patient characteristics analyzed.
Conclusions:
This analysis found no relationship between patient age, gender, gestational age at birth, primary strabismus surgery versus reoperation, insurance type, number of past surgeries, past medical history, or home location and the likelihood that a parent will consent to resident participation in pediatric strabismus surgery. It is not possible to predict which parents may or may not grant permission for resident participation based on the characteristics studied.