Establishing a surgical partnership between Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Toronto, Canada.

BACKGROUND Academic partnerships between high- and low/middle-income countries can improve the quality of surgical education and health care delivery in each setting. We report the perceived needs related to collaborative surgical education in a resource-limited setting. METHODS We used qualitative methods to elicit the opinions of surgical faculty members and surgical residents and quantitative methods to outline surgical procedure type and volume. RESULTS Ethiopian faculty members identified the management of trauma and emergency surgical care as a priority. They identified supervision in the operating room (OR), topic-specific lectures and supervising resident assessments in the clinic as appropriate roles for partners. Residents were in agreement with faculty members, highlighting a desire for supervision in the OR and topic-specific lectures. CONCLUSION We present specific experiences and needs of a surgical teaching unit in a low-income country, paving the way to form a meaningful and responsive relationship between 2 surgical departments in 2 universities.