A Roadmap to Surgical Education: A Scoping Review of Educational Needs in Surgery

Abstract

Purpose: Understanding the educational needs can help organizations like the Association for Surgical Education to develop relevant solutions. However, relevant literature is limited to know the needs. Thus, the aim of this study was to identify the educational needs in surgical education literature. Methods: Following the PRISMA Statement guideline, we performed a scoping review with three search terms in two databases in tandem with three inclusion criteria to identify the literature pertinent to educational needs in surgery. Through content analysis of the abstracts of the identified literature, we inquired about the objectives, methods, data sources, and conclusions in each identified article to tease out the trends, specialties, participants, and topics of educational needs in surgical education literature. Descriptive statistics of frequency were used to present the data. Results: The PRISMA article selection procedures resulted in 212 peer-reviewed journal articles in the scoping review. The content analysis identified the trends of the needs in four areas including the trends of educational needs, surgical specialties, participants, and topics of educational needs. To synthesize the results of the data analysis, a heat map was created with the cross-section of the trends and topics of educational needs showing the hot topics and potential gaps in surgical education literature. Conclusions: The scoping review provides surgical educators and trainees an overview of the educational needs in the literature that can serve as a roadmap of educational needs to be taken into consideration by organizations like the ASE to help address the needs and advance the field.