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Delphi methodology successfully identifies essential procedural steps for breast augmentation, facelift

Researchers established a methodology to determine the essential procedural steps for plastic surgery procedures to assist resident training and assessment.

For this pilot study, the researchers selected two procedures, breast augmentation and facelift, because of their lack of robust assessment metrics.

A consensus process was used to complete a list of procedural steps for each procedure.

An online survey sent to plastic surgery program directors and the Royal College Specialty Training Committee members in Canada asked whether each step was considered essential or nonessential when assessing competence among graduating plastic surgery trainees.

After two rounds of surveys, the expert panel achieved consensus regarding the essential steps for two plastic surgery procedures.

In the first round, there was 90% agreement for 16 steps each for breast augmentation and facelift. In the second round, the group reached 90% agreement for 17 steps for breast augmentation and 24 steps for facelift.

The researchers noted the challenge in narrowing the number of essential steps for these procedures.

This technique may be useful to develop essential objective assessment to implement competency-based medical education into plastic surgery education.

In the future, similar itemized skills for other procedures can be created which can aid in the assessment of procedural Entrustable Professional Activities in a competency-based curriculum for plastic surgery training. – by Abigail Sutton

Disclosure: The researchers reported no relevant financial disclosures.