The importance of robotic-assisted procedures in residency training to applicants of a community general surgery residency program

Surgery is an ever evolving discipline, and robotic-assisted procedures are the next generation of surgical techniques. There is currently no requirement for robotic training in surgical residency programs; thus, general surgery programs have incorporated it into their curriculums to varying degrees, including our recently adopted curriculum. As programs adopt new curriculum, it is unknown how applicants in community general surgery view the importance of robotic surgery for future procedures and its overall value in their training. To answer these questions, a voluntary and anonymous survey was given to all applicants of our community general surgery program and the responses assessed with descriptive statistics. The majority (76.92%) of our applicants believed robotic surgery would be very important in the future; however, less respondents (63.46%) believed that robotics would be very important to their particular career. While most (57.69%) reported being very interested in a program that offers robotic surgery, other respondents (53.85%) were indifferent toward a program that did not offer a robotics curriculum. Therefore, most applicants to our community program believe that robotic surgery will be an important part of surgery in upcoming years and most are very interested in a residency program that includes robotic surgery in the curriculum.