Abstract
<jats:p>Medical residency is a demanding period of specialty training, marked by intense clinical exposure, heavy workload, and continuous knowledge development. Identifying how residents prefer to learn may help residency programs refine their educational strategies and better align teaching approaches with the needs of trainees. This study assessed learning-style preferences among medical residents using the Felder–Soloman Index of Learning Styles. A total of 152 residents from clinical and surgical specialties in a Brazil-ian medical residency program were included. In the overall sample, the predominant preferences were sensing (90.79%), visual (73.68%), active (62.50%), and sequential (70.39%). Comparisons between clinical and surgical specialties showed a significant dif-ference only in the understanding domain, with residents from clinical specialties being more frequently classified as sequential than those from surgical specialties (80.0% vs. 63.2%). The limited variation across groups suggests that most residents share a broadly similar learning profile, although some cognitive-processing preferences may differ ac-cording to specialty-related demands. These findings support the use of diversified educa-tional strategies in medical residency, combining visual resources, active learning meth-ods, and structured practical activities adapted to clinical and surgical training contexts.</jats:p>