We aimed to identify potential variables predictive of a resident achieving faculty future entrustment as a way to enhance attending surgeons’ planning of teaching in the operating room leading to improved resident operative autonomy in practice.

We reviewed 273 resident performance evaluations from 91 surgical cases that were collected from 11 general surgery chief residents and 16 attending surgeons between April 2018 and June 2019 using a validated evaluation instrument. The primary outcome measure was prospective resident entrustment estimated by the rater for future similar cases. We used descriptive statistics and the boosted tree analysis model to find potential predictors for the outcome measure and examine test-retest reliability by procedure.

Step-specific guidance (r = 0.77, p < 0.0001) was the variable most highly associated with prospective resident entrustment in bivariate linear analysis. The boosted tree analysis demonstrated step-specific guidance was the strongest predictor for prospective resident entrustment in the OR, and its predictive importance was much higher than the overall guidance (0.64 > 0.18). Test-retest reliability was from 0.93 to 0.98 across procedures, indicating the likelihood that attending surgeons granted future autonomy complied with their evaluation of prospective resident entrustment was high.

By assessing step-specific guidance, attending surgeons can reliably judge residents’ future entrustment and potentially better plan for operative teaching/supervision that may lead to granting a surgical resident operative autonomy on similar cases in the future. Our findings provide insight into prospective faculty development of surgical teaching aimed at improving resident readiness for independent practice.