Educational climate of a pathology residency program at a tertiary care hospital

planning) [2, 3]. Experiences within an EC are directly or indirectly linked with the valuable outcomes of student achievement, satisfaction, and success [1]. During postgraduate (PG) train- ing programs, EC is an essential marker for quality in PG medical education [4–6], and the suc- cessful translation of a curriculum in EE depends upon an adequate EC [7–9]. Enhancing the latter in medical education also depends upon establishing a continuous feedback system, espe- cially among emerging nations and new training institutions [9]. Henceforth, establishing a feedback system in EC of a histopathology residency program is necessary to achieve positive outcomes through an EE that improves learning [7–9], the well-being of PGRs [10–12], profes- sionalism [13], learning satisfaction [14], and competency of health care professionals (HCP) [9]. The EC of PG programs highlights the environment in which PGRs learn about the context and shared identification of approaches, techniques, and practices [15]. In comparison, achieve- ment of excellence through PGRs’ training program may be influenced by obtrusive clinical EE that may lead to fatigue, exhaustion, and burnout among PGRs, leading to dropout [16]. Measuring the learning environment (LE) offers a reference point for the didactic institu- tion [17]. The measurement process facilitates answering trainers’ and trainees’ questions about the learning experience’s quality. The pathology training program is considered distinc- tive because a deficiency is observed in the exposure to several lab sections during house job

and MBBS. The pathology residency program is divided into subspecialties such as Chemistry, Histopathology, Immunology, Hematology, and Microbiology; each sub-specialty has its unique EC. To fulfill the increasing demand for pathology training, valuable programs are needed on a large scale as any change or development induces recognition of the available teaching models, boosts PGRs’ education, and enhances their experience. The pathology grad- uates and employers agree that existing pathology residency training remains inadequate in preparing the residents who are competent in clinical chemistry during their professional careers primarily due to less value placed by residents on learning clinical chemistry and the lack of directors who supervise and manage labs of clinical chemistry [18]. The impassiveness of the teaching staff or residents is an essential obstruction in teaching clinical chemistry to the residents [18]. As explained by residents, unsupportive EE and abortive teaching techniques are the main drawbacks [18]. EC using D-RECT has been assessed in various local and international studies [19]. How- ever, these studies involved different disciplines [3, 19–21], and the nature of EC depends upon the nature of the setting, i.e., each unique specialty and sub-specialty [1, 18, 22, 23]. The current study, therefore, assessed the EC of a PG pathology residency program by administer- ing D-RECT and was conducted considering the need for future research in more focused areas by examining the individual disciplines to increase the likelihood of ruling out subject-

specific differences [24], mainly when the same climate index can be used even with different stakeholders [7]. Materials and methods A cross-sectional study design approved by the ethics committee of Shifa Tameer-e-Millat University was used at Shifa International Hospital (Islamabad, Pakistan) to assess EC scores of pathology residents by years of training. Enrollment in the study required voluntarily informed permission from participants (including all voluntary pathology PGRs), which was acquired through written consent following the Shifa International Hospital Protocol. Data was collected from 06/06/2021-06/30/2021. During this period, the D-RECT instrument (fifty items categorized into eleven subscales) was used to evaluate EC scores among trainees, and demographic data variables like age, sex, specialist area, and years of training were acquired in the data collection process. PLOS ONE Educational climate of a pathology residency program PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303534 May 23, 2024 2 / 10 Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.