2.4 Construction of the interview guide

Data collected from focus groups and the individual interviews was used to create an interview script for the main study.

Because surgeons found it difficult to describe their career stages, the interview began by asking a series of relatively closed questions:

• How would you describe the current stage of your career? • Do you recognize that there have been different stages in your career?

If so, how would you describe them?

Because the pilot study had shown that various clearly defined learning modalities or channels had been used by surgeons, specific questions were asked about each of these learning modalities. The interviewee was taken through the various stages of his career and asked about every teaching modality at every stage in his career. The questions asked were:

• What role did people play? • What role did literature play (eg, books, journals)? • What role did formal educational events play? • What role did Internet resources play(What resources have you used?)? • What role did hospital meetings such as morbidity and mortality play?

In addition to these specific questions, two general questions were asked with regard to accessing educational resources at various stages of a surgeon’s career. These general questions were:

• Can you remember particular methods of learning or characteristics of the stage X? • When looking back, what method of learning was the most important to you during stage X?

Historical data, ie, what learning resources an individual surgeon used during previous stages in his career, is interesting and its analysis shows the evolution of teaching and learning methodologies with time. The purpose of this study, however, is to try to precisely define the current learning needs of surgeons and for that reason, a separate section was added at the end of the interview template relating to the surgeon's latest educational needs/experience. The questions asked were as follows:

• In the last year, have you made any changes to the way you practice surgery? • What did you change and why? • In what ways did learning play a role in changing your practice? • What learning resources did you use?

The final interview template can be found in Appendix 1.