Journal of surgical education
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The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education requires that "faculty should encourage and support residents in scholarly activities." There are no guidelines, however, to illustrate how this should be done, and only a small number of published reports offer examples of successful efforts to spur resident research. We sought to improve our residents' participation in scholarly activities. ⋯ The addition of an experienced medical editor, changes in program requirements, and an increased commitment to promotion of resident research across the faculty led to a dramatic increase in resident publications. Our changes may be a model for other programs that have the financial resources and faculty commitment necessary to achieve a rapid turnaround.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study
Laparoscopic skills maintenance: a randomized trial of virtual reality and box trainer simulators.
A number of simulators have been developed to teach surgical trainees the basic skills required to effectively perform laparoscopic surgery; however, consideration needs to be given to how well the skills taught by these simulators are maintained over time. This study compared the maintenance of laparoscopic skills learned using box trainer and virtual reality simulators. ⋯ This research showed that basic laparoscopic skills learned using the FLS simulator were maintained more consistently than those learned on the LapSim simulator. However, by the final follow-up, both simulator-trained cohorts had skill levels that were not significantly different to those at proficiency after the initial training period.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
A prospective randomized controlled blinded study to evaluate the effect of short-term focused training program in laparoscopy on operating room performance of surgery residents (CTRI /2012/11/003113).
Laparoscopic surgery requires certain specific skills. There have been several attempts to minimize the learning curve with training outside the operation room. Although simulators have been well validated as tools to teach technical skills, their integration into comprehensive curricula is lacking. Several randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews have demonstrated that the technical skills learned on these simulators transfer to the operating room. Currently, however, the integration of these simulated models into formal residency training curricula is lacking. In our institute, we have adopted the Tuebingen Trainer devised by Professor GF Buess from Germany. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the training of surgical residents on an ex vivo phantom model for basic laparoscopic skill acquisition and its transferability to the OR performance. ⋯ Our study has clearly shown that training on the Tuebingen Trainer with integrated porcine organs results in a statistically significant improvement in the operating room performance of surgical residents as compared with the nontrained residents, thereby indicating a transfer of skills from training to the operating room.
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The authors examine the ethical implications of teaching general surgery residents laparoscopic pyloromyotomy. ⋯ We previously proposed an ethical model based on 2 fundamental ethical principles: the ethical concept of the physician as a fiduciary and the contractarian model of ethics. The fiduciary physician practices medicine competently with the patient’s best interests in mind. The role of a fiduciary professional imposes ethical standards on all physicians, at the core of which is the virtue of integrity, which requires the physician to practice medicine to standards of intellectual and moral excellence. The American College of Surgeons recognizes the need for current and future surgeons to understand professionalism, which is one of the 6 core competencies specified by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Contracts are models of negotiation and ethically permissible compromise. Negotiated assent or consent is the core concept of contractarian bioethics. Nonnegotiable goods are goals for residency training that should never be sacrificed or negotiated away. Fiduciary responsibility to the patient, regardless of level of training, should never be compromised, because doing so violates the professional virtue of integrity. The education of the resident is paramount to afford him or her the opportunity to provide competent care without supervision to future patients. Such professional competence is the intellectual and clinical foundation of fiduciary responsibility, making achievement of educational goals during residency training another nonnegotiable good.
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Medical students have typically received relatively modest training in approaches for engaging the concerns of patients and families facing life-threatening situations and terminal illnesses. We propose that medical students would perceive benefits to their communication skills, understanding of the role of the chaplain, and knowledge of emotional and spiritual needs of grieving patients and families after shadowing hospital-based trauma chaplains whose work focuses on emergency department traumas and intensive care units. ⋯ Observational experiences with hospital-based trauma chaplains might be an effective nondidactic approach for teaching medical students effective communication with patients and families, collaboration with chaplains, and spirituality in patient care.