Impact of COVID-19 on orthopaedic residents—an Indian perspective

OBJECTIVES: The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health emergency causing a deleterious effect on the health system. It affected all the specialties and subspecialties in the medical field causing havoc in the health institutions. This pandemic affected both orthopaedic consultants and the residents who are under training. Our purpose was to study the impact of COVID-19 on orthopaedic residents in their professional life. METHOD: The study design was a computer-based digital online survey of the orthopaedic residents in India. The survey had 15 questions with multiple options related to the effect of COVID-19 on their orthopedic department, effect on teaching, surgical exposure, hands-on surgeries, the effect on workload, effect on mental stress, exposure to arthroplasty, arthroscopic surgeries, spine surgeries, and deformity correction surgeries. RESULTS: Elective surgeries stopped in 91% of the hospitals, academic teaching stopped in 98% of the institutions. Eighty-six percent of the residents are not getting adequate surgical exposure, 73% of the residents are getting negligible hands-on surgical training. Residents are mentally stressed related to academic examinations, academic training, and also because of COVID 19 duties. Residents are getting the least exposure in subspecialties like arthroplasty, arthroscopy, and spine. CONCLUSION: The COVID-19 pandemic not only affected the orthopaedic consultants but also the orthopaedic residents to a great extent as residents are the backbone of any department/institution. The pandemic affected significantly resident's academic teaching, surgical exposure, hands-on training and mental stress related to COVID duties, academic training disturbance, and also academic examinations.