HOW THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC HAS AFFECTED THE LIVES AND TRAINING OF SURGICAL RESIDENTS IN MAYO HOSPITAL LAHORE

Objective: To assess how the COVID-19 pandemic affects surgical residents in Mayo hospital Lahore in regard to their training and social life. Study Design: Observational Study. Place and duration of study: Mayo Hospital Lahore, Four months ( May 2020 to August 2020) Methodology: A study was conducted using an online questionnaire on Google docs® containing 25 questions to be filled by residents of surgery and allied surgery of Mayo Hospital Lahore. Residents of general surgery and allied surgical departments working during the COVID-19 pandemic were included in the study. SPSS version 26 was used to analyze. A p-value≤of 0.05 was considered significant. Results: One hundred and two residents responded to our questionnaire from which 83(81.4%) respondents were male and 19(18.6%) were female. Out of all, 87(85.3%) had a fear of contracting COVID-19. 41(40.2%) get infected with COVID-19 from the hospital and 61(59.8%) remained healthy. In all this scenario of the pandemic of covid-19, 95(93.1%) residents thought that their training suffered a lot during this period as compared to 07(6.9%) residents who think that their training does not suffer significantly during the pandemic. During this pandemic, OPD services were suspended so 79(77.5%) residents had no exposure to a variety of cases, and 75(73.5%) think management in a surgical emergency is up to mark. Regression analysis showed that training of residents affected due to a reduction in bed-side teaching (p-value=0.024), decrease in duty hours (p-value=0.005), and reduction in the number of elective surgeries (p-value=0.045) Conclusion: During the pandemic of COVID-19, surgical resident of Mayo hospital had fear of contracting the disease and carrying to their families. Overall they think that their training has been affected by this pandemic due to shut down of outpatient department, elective lists, and bedside teaching in spite of their interest in online teaching.