Factors That Affect Medical Students' Perception and Impression of a Plastic Surgery Program
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Securing a residency training position in plastic surgery is highly competitive each year with a limited quota of positions and numerous qualified applicants. Although previous studies have highlighted the importance of residency programs and applicants seeking a "good fit," it remains poorly understood what influences a medical student's impression and desire to train at a certain program over others. The objective of this cross-sectional study was to identify which specific potentially modifiable factors during elective rotations and program interviews were most important to Canadian medical students when ranking plastic surgery programs. METHODS: An electronic survey with 42 questions was administered to Canadian final year medical students who applied through the 2017 Canadian Residency Match Service to the plastic surgery training program at the University of Toronto. The survey consisted of 7-point Likert scale questions related to demographics, general factors affecting impression of a plastic surgery program, and specific factors related to the elective and interview experiences. Survey responses were collected anonymously for analysis. RESULTS: Twenty-three of 46 applicants completed the survey (50% response rate). The most important general factors affecting a medical student's impression and desire to train at a residency program were mentors at a specific program (weighted average, 6.39) and geographic location of a program (weighted average, 5.65). During elective rotations, the most important factors identified were overall impression of resident and staff collegiality (weighted average, 6.57), overall impression of resident happiness (weighted average, 6.52), and having a formal rotation-end debrief evaluation with the supervising staff (weighted average, 6.04). At program interviews, perceiving an atmosphere of collegiality (weighted average, 6.45) and opportunities to interact with residents and faculty at an organized social event (weighted average, 5.95) were considered of greatest importance. CONCLUSIONS: Current applicants to plastic surgery in Canada prioritize resident happiness, program collegiality, and meaningful faculty relationships, such as those with a mentor, when ranking residency programs. Although finding a mutually "good fit" between applicant and program will remain a major aim, these findings indicate the importance of certain tangible, potentially modifiable factors that affect how medical students ultimately perceive and rank plastic surgery programs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".