Evolution of Learning Styles in Surgery Comparing Residents and Teachers: Cross-Sectional Study.

Background: Studies confirm a relationship between learning style and medical career choice in the learning style patterns observed in distinct types of residency programs. Such patterns can also be applied to general surgery, from medical school to the latest stages of training. Aligning teaching strategies with the predominant learning styles in surgical residency programs has the potential to make training more effective.

Objective: This study aimed to determine the learning styles of general surgery residents and professors in a Brazilian teaching hospital and compare the results with the existing literature.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted in a teaching hospital of a public university in Brazil. Thirty-four general surgery residents of any year of training and 30 professors participated in the study. Participants completed a sociodemographic survey and David Kolb's Learning Style Inventory. This was used to classify participants into one of four distinct types of learners: accommodating, diverging, assimilating, and converging. The relationship between sociodemographic data and learning styles was analyzed using the Fisher test, adjusted using the Bonferroni method, and the effect size was measured using the Cramer V test.

Results: The learning style distribution was similar in both groups, with 43,75% diverging, 42,18% accommodating, 10.93% assimilating, and 3.12% converging styles. A significant relationship was found between sex and learning style (P=.049) and between age and learning style for professors (P=.029). The effect sizes were strong (0.46) and very strong (0.506).

Conclusions: The prevalence of learning styles among general surgery residents and professors at this Brazilian hospital differs from that observed in previous studies, with more diverging and accommodating learners and fewer converging learners, suggesting a shift in learning styles. Understanding learning styles is important for effective surgical training programs. Further research with larger and more diverse populations is needed to confirm these results and explore the factors contributing to the observed differences in learning styles.