Maximizing Cardiothoracic Surgery Training During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Resident Perspective

To the Editor:

There is no doubt that the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has resulted in disruptions to cardiothoracic surgical training. We applaud Fuller and colleagues¹ in highlighting the vital role of educators in providing safe, feasible, and equitable solutions to respond to these challenges. As trainees, we assert that now, more than ever, we must take responsibility and ownership of our education, both as individual learners and members of our training programs.

We need to be “affable, available, able,” proactive in seeking learning opportunities, and to practice both inside and outside the operating room for technical and nonoperative technical skills.² Furthermore, we must be meticulous and accurate in characterizing our operative experiences and communicate with our educators as they help identify methods for trainees of all levels to address educational gaps exacerbated by the pandemic, recognizing that case volume is not equivalent to competence. With limited opportunities in the operating room, learners have a duty to maximize each operation, not only for oneself but to also endeavor to establish equity among trainees of all levels. Multi-institutional collaboration and sharing of curricular resources, often through online platforms, can help transcend geospatial and temporal limitations to standardize trainee learning and obtain objective data of trainee knowledge gaps and proficiency.

As the pandemic uproots the operative training experience of surgical specialties,³ it also prompts us to reflect on our role as future cardiothoracic surgeons beyond the operating room. In this time of health care crisis and social unrest, the pandemic can be an opportunity for us to cultivate our skills as communicators and stewards of scientific information, as well as leaders, collaborators, innovators, and advocates to meet the challenges and demands of tomorrow.⁴

Although physically distant, we must remain socially connected in our collective learned experiences to become better together. In doing so, we can turn challenges and crises into opportunities to innovate within our current training paradigms, improve the efficiency and quality of cardiothoracic surgical education today, and create a sustainable path to face global health crises in the future.