Satisfaction of the Irish Trauma and Orthopaedic training programme with the Intercollegiate Surgical Curriculum Programme

Background Surgical training has undergone extensive changes in recent years. The Intercollegiate Surgical Curriculum Programme (ISCP) has been utilised in the UK for many years to facilitate the education and assessment of trainees. It was adopted by the Irish Trauma and Orthopaedics (T&O) training programme in July 2015. This study sought to evaluate the use satisfaction with ISCP in the Irish context. Methods A total of 58 T&O trainers and trainees undertook a paper-based survey during national training days in March and April 2017. Results Eighty-nine percent of trainees responded to the survey along with 85% of trainers. Seventy-nine percent of respondents had been using ISCP for over a year. Most aspects of ISPC were rated as average, with the induction process, online multi-source feedback (MSF) and overall user friendliness rating poorly amongst respondents. Seventeen percent felt that ISCP had a positive impact on training, while 66% felt that it did not adversely affect their training opportunities. Forty-three percent reported a negative impact on the trainer-trainee relationship with adoption of ISCP and only 24% felt that the educational feedback was improved with the new system. Forty-two percent agreed that ISCP created a more structured and supervised framework to the training scheme. Conclusions Our survey demonstrated significant concerns and reservations amongst the Irish users of ISCP. The demonstrable level of trainee dissatisfaction with ISCP may represent a frustration that key problems such as the regulated training content of jobs remains unaddressed while ISCP does little to improve meaningful formative feedback.