Time to develop a new standard for defining success in global surgery training

Global surgery refers to a multidisciplinary clinical, political and economic area of practice and advocacy, aiming to provide universal access to high-quality surgical, obstetric, trauma, and anaesthesia care in underserved populations. Data on the positive impact of interventions can be a powerful tool for advocacy, securing funding, influencing policy-makers, or raising awareness. Current methods to evaluate the effectiveness of global surgery strategies lean heavily on data-driven snapshots, but it is time to longitudinally measure how taught skills are retained and applied by local communities.