Surgical complications in the first and second semesters of the general surgery medical residence. A study of 14063 cases

•Surgical complications increase after the entry of new resident doctors.•Second-year resident doctors need more training time.•The increase in surgical complications is associated with the entry of new resident doctors, but also with the progression from the first to the second year of the course. To evaluate whether the rate of surgical complications is higher during the first semester of the General Surgery residency in the largest hospital complex in Latin America. During this period, students are expected to have less experience in carrying out procedures. During a period of two years, all General Surgery resident doctors at the Hospital das Clínicas of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo, made a notification of all the procedures they performed (n = 14.063), containing information such as name of the procedure, date, who participated, complications, among others. These data were analyzed with the purpose of evaluating the variation in the rate of complications throughout the year. There was a 52 % increase in the rate of complications in the first academic semester when compared to the second semester. This phenomenon was observed in resident doctors in the first and second years of residency. Furthermore, it was observed that second-year residents remain with high rates of complications, in some procedures, for a longer time than first-year residents. Furthermore, the first three months (March, April and May) seem to have the highest complication rates of the entire year. The impact of these complications can affect several health services and the increase in surgical complications in the first half of the year must be monitored by institutions, in order to control this phenomenon.