The Evolution of Learning Styles in Surgery: A Cross-Sectional Study Comparing Residents and Teachers. (Preprint)

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 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. It classifies participants into one of four distinct types of learners: accommodating, diverging, assimilating, and converging. Relationship between sociodemographic data and learning styles was analyzed using Fisher's test, adjusted by the Bonferroni method, and the effect size was measured using Cramer's 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=0.049) and between age and learning style for professors (p=0.029). The effect sizes were strong (0.46) and very strong (0.506), respectively. CONCLUSIONS The prevalence of learning styles among general surgery residents and professors at this Brazilian hospital differs from that of previous studies, with a higher proportion of diverging and accommodating learners and a lower proportion of converging learners, pointing to a change in learning styles. Understanding learning styles is important for developing effective and inclusive 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.