Abstract / Summary
Abstract Purpose The OpTrust tool has accumulated validity evidence in general surgery as a measure of entrustment within the faculty-trainee dyad. This study evaluated the ability to adapt OpTrust to the unique training environment of cardiac surgery and enhanced its utility by grounding entrustment scores to the specific sequence of events shared amongst most cardiac cases. Methods Elective cardiac surgeries were observed from November 2022 to June 2023. Trained third party raters completed OpTrust assessments and recorded whether faculty or trainees performed each of fifteen cardiac-specific surgical benchmarks. Entrustment scores were compared between faculty- and trainee-completed benchmarks using two-tailed t -tests. Spearman’s rank correlation and Poisson regression modeling tested the relationship between OpTrust scores and trainee benchmark performance. Results Entrustment scores were significantly higher for trainee-completed benchmarks than faculty-completed ones, and higher entrustment scores were associated with trainee-completion of surgical benchmarks ( p < 0.001). Increased OpTrust scores correspond to statistically significantly more surgical benchmarks performed by trainees. Conclusion OpTrust can be adapted to cardiac surgery, and the Cardiac OpTrust supplement uses cardiac surgery-specific benchmarks to provide granular insight into intraoperative entrustment and autonomy in this novel context.