Surgical outreach in rural South Africa: Are we managing to impart surgical skills?

Background. The Department of Health in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) has run a surgical outreach programme for over a decade. Objective. To quantify the impact of the outreach programme by analysing its effect on the operative capacity of a single rural health district. Methods. During 2012, investigators visited each district hospital in Sisonke Health District (SHD), KZN, to quantify surgery undertaken by resident staff between 1998 and 2013. Investigators also reviewed the operative registers of the four district hospitals in SHD for a 6-month period (March- August 2012) to document the surgery performed at each hospital. The number of staff who attended specialist-based teaching was recorded in an attempt to measure the impact of each visit