The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on surgical residency programmes in Italy: a nationwide analysis on behalf of the Italian Polyspecialistic Young Surgeons Society (SPIGC)

Abstract

Introduction: Recently, Italy has been heavily hit by COVID-19 pandemic and today it is still one of the most affected countries in the world. The subsequent necessary lockdown decreed by the Italian Government had an outstanding impact on the daily life of the entire population, including that of Italian surgical residents' activity. Our survey aims to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on the training programme of Italian surgical residents.

Materials and methods: We designed a 12-item-electronic anonymous questionnaire on SurveyMonkey© web application. The survey was composed of different sections concerning demographic characteristics and impacts of COVID-19 on the concrete participation in clinical, surgical and research activities. Future perspectives of responders after the pandemic were also investigated.

Results: Eighty hundred responses were collected, and 756 questionnaires were considered eligible to be included in the study analysis. Almost 35 and 27% of respondents experienced, respectively, complete interruption of surgical and clinical activities. A subgroup analysis, comparing the COVID-19 impact on clinical activities with demographics data, showed a statistically significant difference related to specialties (p = 0.0062) and Italian regions (p < 0.0001). Moreover, 112 residents have been moved to non-surgical units dealing with COVID-19 or, in some case, they voluntarily decided to interrupt their residency programme to support the ongoing emergency.

Conclusion: Our survey demonstrated that COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the educational programme of Italian surgical residents. Despite many regional differences, this survey highlighted the overall shortage of planning in the re-allocation of resources facing this unexpected health emergency.

Keywords: COVID-19; Clinical activity; Italian surgical residents; Research activity; Surgical activity; Survey.

Fig. 1

a Graphical representation of 112 respondents who left their surgical training divided according to the attended year of residency; b graphical representation of 112 respondents who left their surgical training according to the region where they are employed; c graphical representation of 112 respondents who left their surgical training according to surgical activity; d training and research activities in the field of COVID-19 among the 112 residents who left their surgical training; e impact on clinical training programme among 112 residents who left their surgical training; f direct involvement in COVID-19 emergency activities divided according to surgical specialty among 112 residents who left their surgical training

Fig. 1

a Graphical representation of 112 respondents who left their surgical training divided according to the attended year of residency; b graphical representation of 112 respondents who left their surgical training according to the region where they are employed; c graphical representation of 112 respondents who left their surgical training according to surgical activity; d training and research activities in the field of COVID-19 among the 112 residents who left their surgical training; e impact on clinical training programme among 112 residents who left their surgical training; f direct involvement in COVID-19 emergency activities divided according to surgical specialty among 112 residents who left their surgical training

Fig. 2

a Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on residents’ active participation to clinics divided according to surgical specialty. b Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on residents’ active participation to clinics, divided according to the region where they are employed. c Impact of COVID-19 emergency on active participation to clinics divided according to the attended year of residency

Fig. 3

Impact of pandemic COVID-19 on training and research activities divided according to the attended year of residency

Fig. 4

a Impact on clinical training programme divided according to surgical specialty. b Impact on clinical training programme divided according to regions where respondents are employed

Fig. 5

a Impact of COVID-19 emergency on residents’ future career. b Impact on residents’ future career divided according to surgical specialty

Fig. 6

Training and research activities in the field of COVID-19