Global perceptions of plastic surgery, suturing, and wound care among undergraduate medical students: A systematic review.

Plastic surgery is an important and diverse specialty in which undergraduates have an opportunity to learn important principles that are relevant to multiple specialties, including wound assessment and dressing management, suturing, burns management, craniofacial abnormality treatment, and cancer resection and reconstruction. Implementing undergraduate extracurricular learning events to supplement the already crowded undergraduate curriculum should be guided by the core knowledge requirements for medical students and the areas of weakness in their understanding. This systematic review aimed to provide a synthesis of current students' perceptions of plastic surgery and the pedagogical methods used to teach it globally, with a focus on the UK, as the first steps in developing suitable teaching resources. The 22 cross-sectional survey-based studies retrieved from a systematic PubMed search between 28/10/12 and 13/03/24 encompass students' opinions of plastic surgery, their attitudes of its place in medical school curricula, and their confidence in suturing and wound care as a proxy for their interest in plastic surgery. The literature is largely unified: plastic surgery is often misperceived by medical students despite general curiosity about the specialty. Methodological similarities were identified in some studies, which enabled comparisons, but only a few studies held deeper insights into the specific perceptions of students and offered implications for future practice. Small samples of chronological cross-sections and a bias towards North American study populations were noted, limiting the generalisability of findings. Recommendations to increase plastic surgery exposure in the undergraduate curriculum are suggested.