SP8.5 - Enhancing the confidence of FY1 Doctors in managing General Surgical Patients through the introduction of an online handbook– A quality improvement project

Abstract Background Emerging as a Foundation Year 1 (FY1) doctor from undergraduate training can be daunting. Furthermore, working in Colorectal Surgery can pose challenges: managing both elective and acute surgical patients with complex needs. We designed a General Surgery and Colorectal Surgery handbook to help FY1 doctors navigate training. This Quality Improvement Project aimed to assess the impact of and alleviate some of the uncertainty experienced by FY1 doctors during this transitional phase. Methods An electronic handbook was compiled with contributions from across the Multidisciplinary Team which was reviewed and approved for distribution within our Trust. An online questionnaire was distributed to assess pre-placement confidence in key domains on a 10-point Likert scale. This was sent to FY1 doctors who had previously completed a rotation within colorectal surgery without the handbook. The handbook was distributed to new cohort of FY1 doctors a week prior to the start of their rotation in Colorectal Surgery. An identical questionnaire was sent to the new cohort of FY1s within a month of their rotation and results were compared with previous cohort. Results In all surveyed areas, there was an improvement in confidence in the post-intervention group compared to that shown in the pre-intervention group. The average improvement in median score across all areas was 3.8 points. Conclusion This project demonstrated an overwhelmingly positive response to a formalised handbook by FY1 doctors in training. This intervention has helped FY1 doctors manage colorectal and general surgery patients with enhanced confidence thus paving way for safer patient care.