A surgeon or a physician with specialized training in operational techniques performs surgery and has a responsibility to teach surgery. Surgery is a medical specialty that utilizes operating procedures to cut, extract, or otherwise modify the body to treat diseases and ailments. Medical students must be taught surgery by a competent clinical surgeon who also serves as an educator. To improve the percentage of graduates choosing to work in generalist fields, medical schools are changing their curricula. As students spend less time on surgical rotations, there is an ever increasing amount of surgical content to transfer and technical skills to teach.
Methods to Teach Surgery
Large Group Teaching
As continuing medical education takes place in enormous convention centers with one or a panel of educators instructing hundreds of students, standard lectures will surely be on the student’s horizon. Although a large group setting is not optimal for imparting technical skills and problem-solving strategies, it can be beneficial for the straightforward dissemination of information from the physician educator to the medical student. Any surgeon can improve the creation and management of lectures by using effective strategies. When creating the lecture’s content, it is crucial to account for concepts like objectives, relevance, reinforcement, and conclusions.
The objectives must be specific, clearly stated at the start of the lecture, and realistic for the time allotted. To pique student interest, it is also desirable early on to describe the relevance of the topic. The summary is given every 10 to 15 minutes because the average student’s attention span is no longer than that. It also helps to reinforce the information transfer to the pupils with a helpful overview. The large-group lecture format is still in use because of the use of the teacher’s time. However, there are alternatives to employing online resources that enable the intended dissemination of fundamental surgical knowledge while facilitating the replacement of lectures with more active learning techniques.
Small Group Teaching
Discussions focused on cases or problems are excellent for small-group instruction. They are easy to conduct, conveniently organized, and represent the doctor’s work while seeing patients. The instructor selects a surgical case or problem that they considered to be significant. This case might include a patient the surgeon has dealt with before, or a situation the student is actively researching. In the case/problem-based method, cognitive abilities like data processing, reasoning, and problem-solving are taught and shown. This strategy promotes the interaction with colleagues that is eventually necessary for the practice of medicine by applying the knowledge acquired passively from textbooks, lectures, and Internet sources to the condition presented.
Simulation-Based Training to Teach Surgery
Technical and non-technical skills can be through simulation-based training in a secure, non-threatening setting. Simulation in training is in the military (flight simulators) and sports (golf simulators); it is also used more frequently in medical education. The depiction of the medical event by a made-up model for educational purposes is known as medical simulation. The medical event could be a procedure, an interaction, or a circumstance. The simulation is the constructed model. Technical simulation can be done with task trainers, partial- or full-body manikins, live or cadaveric animals, human cadavers, or virtual reality computer systems. It is intended to teach technical or procedural skills. Role-play, mock board exams, and interaction with standardized patients are all examples of simulation used to improve communication, knowledge, and decision-making skills. Surgeon educators have to provide technical and procedural knowledge. That could involve suturing and knot tying for medical students utilizing a suitable task trainer.
Mentorship Learning
In a variety of locations, including clinics, private offices, patient bedsides, hospital rounds, and operating or procedure rooms, surgeons mentor trainees. In each of these circumstances, the surgeon has the chance to demonstrate professionalism in addition to higher-order cognitive skills. Allow the learner to see the patient after the surgeon’s has modeled how they work with patients. Even merely “shadowing” a surgeon has value; there is immense instructional potential in having the student first observe the patient in clinic. When presenting the case to the faculty, the student must accurately relay the patient’s history and start to assemble a possible differential diagnosis. Although this method can take time during a busy clinic with practice and selection of appropriate patients to teach surgery, the process can be smooth and rewarding for both student and educator.
Teach Surgery Well
Surgeons who are intelligent, highly motivated, and steeped in the world of technology are teachers who can continue to improve their professional experience in instructional approaches. They are responsible for imparting surgical information, decision-making abilities, and technical skills to medical students while modeling professionalism and ethical behavior. The expectations are that the medical student can do a surgical consultation, exhibit preoperative counseling, comprehend fundamental operative processes, and execute postoperative care while being aware of potential surgical difficulties. The medical educator has an important role in their obligation to teach surgery to the best of their ability to meet healthcare needs.
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HAMZA ATHAR is a third-year MBBS( bachelor of medicine, bachelor of surgery) student at QUAID-E-AZAM medical college, Bahawalpur, Pakistan.
References:
Sweeney, B. (2012, September 1). Teaching Surgery to Medical Students. Retrieved November 8, 2022, from https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/3577572#free-full-text
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