Maximizing Educational Impact in Plastic Surgery Residency: An Assessment of Resident Learning Styles

Purpose:

Creating effective learning opportunities is crucial because trainees have increasingly limited time. Current concepts in adult learning emphasize that experience plays a central role in the cycle of learning. Residents in many surgical disciplines have a strong preference for hands on learning, but no studies have been done in plastic surgery. The purpose of this study is to determine if plastic surgery learners have unique learning style preferences to better guide curriculum development.

 

Methods:  

Plastic surgery residents, pre-residency research fellows, and attending plastic surgeons completed the Kolb Learning Style Inventory v. 3.1(KLSI) ¹. This instrument assesses how an individual best grasps new information (either by experiencing it [CE] or thinking about it [AC]) and how they transform that information into knowledge (either by actively doing something [AE] or by reflecting on the experience [RO]). Preferences for each of these four learning phases combine in four distinct learning styles (Converging [AC+AE], Diverging [CE+RO], Assimilating [AC+RO] and Accommodating [CE+AE]). Scores were analyzed for preferred learning phase(s) and dominant learning style within each level of training.

 

Results:  

A cohort of plastic surgery residents (n= 22), research fellows (n=3), and attending surgeons (n=3) participated. Plastic surgery learners demonstrated diverse learning styles with no relation to level of training with converging (35.7%), diverging (25%), and accommodating (21.4%) accounting for 82.1% of the cohort. Assimilating (14.3%) was the least prevalent and one resident (0.04%) was balanced across learning styles. Despite the varied learning styles, the overall cohort demonstrated highest tendency toward processing knowledge by doing, or “Active Experimentation” (69th %ile), a finding that prevailed regardless of training level.

 

Conclusions:

Unlike other surgical specialities where the converging learning style prevails, plastic surgery residents have uniquely mixed learning styles, perhaps unsurprising given the diverse talents, traits and backgrounds of people entering the speciality.  While those with a preference for thinking/reflecting are well served by our current curricula, those with a preference for experiencing/experimenting are likely not being optimally engaged and educated in our current environment where hands-on experience is diminishing.  Future curricula should be developed to better target the full experiential learning cycle, with a particular focus on creating opportunities for Active Experimentation such as those afforded by simulation.

 

References:

1. Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.