• Jens Rothenberger, Seyed Morteza Seyed Jafari, Kai P Schnabel, Christian Tschumi, Sarina Angermeier, and Maziar Shafighi.
• University Clinic of Plastic and Hand Surgery, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
• J Surg Educ. 2015 Sep 1; 72 (5): 868-74.

BackgroundLearning surgical skills in the operating room may be a challenge for medical students. Therefore, more approaches using simulation to enable students to develop their practical skills are required.ObjectivesWe hypothesized that (1) there would be a need for additional surgical training for medical students in the pre-final year, and (2) our basic surgery skills training program using fresh human skin would improve medical students' surgical skills.DesignWe conducted a preliminary survey of medical students to clarify the need for further training in basic surgery procedures. A new approach using simulation to teach surgical skills on human skin was set up. The procedural skills of 15 randomly selected students were assessed in the operating room before and after participation in the simulation, using Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skills. Furthermore, subjective assessment was performed based on students' self-evaluation. The data were analyzed using SPSS, version 21 (SPSS, Inc., Chicago, IL).SettingThe study took place at the Inselspital, Bern University Hospital.ParticipantsA total of 186 pre-final-year medical students were enrolled into the preliminary survey; 15 randomly selected medical students participated in the basic surgical skills training course on the fresh human skin operating room.ResultsThe preliminary survey revealed the need for a surgical skills curriculum. The simulation approach we developed showed significant (p < 0.001) improvement for all 12 surgical skills, with mean cumulative precourse and postcourse values of 31.25 ± 5.013 and 45.38 ± 3.557, respectively. The self-evaluation contained positive feedback as well.ConclusionSimulation of surgery using human tissue samples could help medical students become more proficient in handling surgical instruments before stepping into a real surgical situation. We suggest further studies evaluating our proposed teaching method and the possibility of integrating this simulation approach into the medical school curriculum.Copyright © 2015 Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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