A National Survey of Undergraduate Suture and Local Anesthetic Training in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Background: Suturing is a skill expected to be attained by all medical students on graduation, according to the General Medical Council's (GMC) Tomorrow's Doctors. There are no GMC recommendations for the amount of suture training required at medical school nor the level of competence to be achieved. This study examines the state of undergraduate suture training by surveying a sample of medical students across the United Kingdom.

Methods: We distributed a survey to 17 medical schools to be completed by undergraduates who have undergone curricular suture training. The survey included questions relating to career intention, hours of curricular suture training, hours of additional paid training, confidence in performing various suture techniques and knowledge of their indications. We also asked about the students' perceived proficiency at injecting local anesthetic and their overall opinion of medical school suture training.

Results: We received responses from 705 medical students at 16 UK medical schools. A total of 607 (86.1%) medical students had completed their scheduled curricular suture training. Among them, 526 (86.5%) students reported inadequate suture training in medical school and 133 (21.9%) students had paid for additional training. Results for all competence markers were significantly lower than the required GMC standards (p < 0.001). Students who had paid for additional training were significantly more confident across all areas examined (p < 0.001).

Conclusions: Our study identified a deficiency in the curricular suture training provided to the medical students surveyed. These findings suggest that medical schools should provide more opportunities for students to develop their suturing skills to achieve the GMC standard.

Keywords: Medical Knowledge; Patient Care; Practice-Based Learning and Improvement; medical education standards; survey; suture training; undergraduate.